Mobile World Live (MWL) brings you our top three picks of the week as Ericsson CEO Borje Ekholm stepped down, Anthropic faced a US clampdown on its latest AI models and the UK outlined plans to ban under-16 users from social media.

Ericsson CEO Ekholm set for exit

What happened: Ericsson lined-up a changing of the guard, announcing Borje Ekholm will step down as CEO on 30 September after more than nine years at the helm and lining up current networks boss Per Narvinger to take over.

Why it matters: Ericsson chair Jan Carlson said the incoming CEO brings “deep technical knowledge of our industry as well as extensive commercial experience”, while crediting Ekholm with “extraordinary leadership and strategic advancements”. The chief joined as CEO in 2017 and inherited a business under pressure, steering it through payments scandals, which resulted in a 2019 US fine of more than $1 billion and a $206.7 million. Ekholm will remain at the company as an executive adviser until 15 June 2027.

Narvinger now takes over as 5G spending slows, 6G looms and AI reshapes network demand., He told the Financial Times (FT) the industry is at a “pivotal time”, adding users will “hopefully value your connectivity more” as AI dependence rises. David Hammarwall, currently head of Customer Unit T-Mobile in Market Area Americas, will be Narvinger’s successor as head of the Networks division.

Ericsson CEO Ekholm set for exit

US orders Anthropic to suspend Fable 5, Mythos 5 models

What happened: US President Donald Trump’s administration ordered Anthropic to immediately suspend access to its two most advanced AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, over national security concerns.

Why it matters: The order applied to “any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States”, prompting Anthropic to disable the models for all customers globally while it worked out how to comply. Anthropic said it believes officials were responding to a “potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” affecting cybersecurity safeguards, but argued the issue involved a small number of known minor vulnerabilities which could be replicated on other publicly available models. The company pushed back on the recall, noting Fable 5 had been tested with the US government, the UK AI Safety Institute and private groups before launch. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Amazon CEO Andy Jassy was among tech executives who raised security concerns about the models with officials. Anthropic called the dispute a “misunderstanding” and is seeking to restore access, adding “if this standard was applied across the industry, we believe it would essentially halt all new model deployments for all frontier model providers”. Gina Neff, professor of responsible AI at Queen Mary University London, told the BBC the speed of AI development means and government and enterprises “need to be able to build up capabilities to keep our companies safe from cyberattacks”. She explained the restriction could limit safe AI testing and international cooperation, adding “we’re in uncharted territory at this point”. The latest development marks a sharp escalation in US scrutiny of Anthropic, which is already suing the Trump administration after the Department of War (DoW) blacklisted it as a “supply chain risk” earlier this year.

US orders Anthropic to suspend Fable 5, Mythos 5 models

UK plots under-16 social media ban

What happened: The UK government laid out plans to ban under-16 users from social media and impose wider child-safety restrictions on gaming, live-streaming and AI platforms, with the landmark online safety measures slated for early 2027.

Why it matters: The proposed ban would apply to platforms including Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and X, with messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Signal excluded from the scope. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the move will “give kids their childhood back”, arguing “tech giants had their chance and failed”. However, Assembly Research analyst Megan Jenkins said the government appeared to choose “what feels like a punitive measure for children” over making platforms “safer by design”. The UK’s plan follows Australia, which became the first country in the world to ban social media for under-16s last year. However, the government added it will “learn the lessons from Australia’s experience” by introducing tougher age verification tools. Technology secretary Liz Kendall told the BBC the government plans to disclose further details in July on VPNs, a potential method for bypassing restrictions, as well as curfews, chatbots and other restrictions. Alex Brown, head of TMT at law firm Simmons and Simmons said the move signals “a clear hardening of approach to online safety”, but warned companies must now “grapple with the difficult task of age verification”.

UK plots under-16 social media ban

The post The Friday File: Ericsson; Anthropic; UK appeared first on Mobile World Live.

SpaceX reportedly hit out at a European Commission (EC) plan for distributing satellite spectrum across the bloc, warning current proposals could directly impact connectivity with mobile devices.

Bloomberg reported it had seen a statement from Elon Musk’s rocket company which takes aim at an EC plan to offer only a third of its 2GHz frequency band to companies outside the European Union (EU), keeping the remaining amount for those based in the bloc.

The outlet said the proposal effectively excludes foreign companies, like SpaceX, from offering satellite services to governments and will directly impact the expansion of its Starlink connectivity play.

SpaceX has established a presence in Europe, striking partnerships with European operators including Deutsche Telekom and Orange to offer Starlink D2D services to customers.

However, SpaceX said the EC’s plans will split spectrum “in virtually unusable sub-divided parts”.

It apparently added intentions are inconsistent with international regulations and do not adhere to “Europe’s international obligations and economic reality”.

Ukraine concern
Another bone of contention is an EC aim to reserve airwaves for the Europe IRIS2 constellation, with SpaceX arguing this could risk poorer connectivity in Ukraine where Starlink has been used during the country’s war with Russia.

“The proposal creates a significant likelihood that Europeans will be left without direct-to-device satellite services or that new European operations will create global interference problems, including to emergency services like those in Ukraine,” read the statement.

When outlining the plans, EC EVP Henna Virkkunen said earmarking allocations to local operators would encourage diversification of suppliers and incentivise entry into the market.

She also said the 2GHz band was vital for boosting Europe’s competitiveness, security, and fits in with an ongoing drive around technology sovereignty.

The post SpaceX slams Europe satellite spectrum plan appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Austrian satellite propulsion startup Gate Space has won 6.3 million euros in funding from Europe’s government-backed accelerator program, joining a wave of European companies attracting capital for greater space sovereignty.

The post Austrian propulsion startup joins sovereign space funding surge appeared first on SpaceNews.

Tesla sales are rebounding in Europe even though many people have negative feelings about Elon Musk, the company’s chief executive. We want to know why.

Tesla sales are rebounding in Europe even though many people have negative feelings about Elon Musk, the company’s chief executive. We want to know why.

© Nam Y. Huh/Associated Press

Exceptionally preserved skin of Montsecosuchus depereti, an extinct crocodylomorph no larger than a house cat that prowled the tropical wetlands of Early Cretaceous Spain, has allowed paleontologists to reconstruct details of its scales, sensory organs and even possible banded markings along its tail.

The post 125-Million-Year-Old Crocodile Relative Reveals Its True Colors appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

An extreme exoplanet gives astronomers a rare look at weather changing in real time.

With mass immigration we are witnessing a clash of sexual civilisations, says Bettina Arndt: two incompatible systems of rules about men, women and desire are colliding and the consequences are playing out in courtrooms.

The post The Clash of Sexual Civilisations appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

It’s not the kind of thing astronomers expect to see while observing the powerful effects of a distant supermassive black hole: an unprecedented UFO sighting.

However, that’s precisely what one group of scientists now reports in a preprint paper, who detail the successful detection of one of the strongest UFOs—a black hole phenomenon otherwise known as “ultra-fast outflows”—that astronomers may have ever seen.

The landmark detection was made possible with the XMM-Newton space observatory and NuSTAR X-ray telescope, which allowed the researchers behind the discovery to observe a luminous quasar with origins that date back to “cosmic noon,” revealing a pair of outflow wind components being blasted from the black hole in question.

Cosmic Monsters with Major Appetites

Black holes have more than just large appetites for cosmic material: they also produce significant gas-driven winds from around their accretion disk.

These winds become known as ultra-fast outflows (UFOs) when their strength propels them to greater than ten percent of light speed, and astronomers currently believe they are an important part of what helps black holes regulate their growth, which may also hold for their host galaxies.

One way this occurs is that UFOs help to heat galactic gases that give rise to star formation, a quenching process that most astronomers believe occurred during a period called “cosmic noon,” which occurred between 1.6 and 3.5 billion years after the birth of the universe.

Cosmic Fingerprints of Powerful UFOs

Astronomers can detect ultra-fast outflows based on the “dips” they create in their powerful gusts, which are caused by ionized iron present in their outflow gases. These gases also absorb X-rays along their path away from their black hole originators, which leave “fingerprints” in the form of absorption features that are detectable using X-ray telescopes.

Significantly, these “dips” manifest as a blueshift since they are shifted to higher energies as they move at such high speeds (again, roughly 10% of the speed of light). From the blueshifted energy signatures they comprise, astronomers can determine not only the presence of UFOs, but also the wind speed of their gusty outflows.

In the past, most detections of these high-powered cosmic phenomena have relied on gravitationally lensed quasars. These celestial objects occur when a galaxy or similar feature closer to Earth appears in front of them, magnifying the quasar’s light and significantly brightening its luminosity from our Earthly perspective.

However, lensing of this variety can also present problems, and so astronomers led by Giorgio Lanzuisi of INAF Bologna designed a special system to target more than a dozen hyper-luminous quasars at cosmic noon, as a means of getting a better feel for the dynamics of non-lensed quasars.

“WISSHFUL” Thinking

WISSHFUL is an XMM-Newton multi-year heritage program that Lanzuisi and his colleagues designed for this purpose, whose initial target became a quasar designated WISSH13, whose redshift at 3.294 marks the object’s existence as it appeared approximately 2 billion years after the Big Bang.

WISH13’s black hole also weighs in at close to 2 billion times that of our Sun, which causes it to shine far brighter than normally expected for an object of its estimated mass.

Their work began in the autumn of 2024 by combining observations from XMM-Newton and NuSTAR initially obtained in 2017. From these X-ray images of WISSH12, a pair of distinctive absorption features became evident, which the team determined to have been generated by two separate sources from within the same ultra-fast outflow.

These components were found to travel at different speeds: one moving at close to 30% of the speed of light, while the other at only about 10% of light speed. The slower of these two appears to have been an enduring component of the UFO, while the faster one showed signatures that indicated a more recent appearance. This could mean that it emanates from events that are shorter in duration.

By matching theoretical predictions of a layered wind structure surrounding the black hole, the researchers say their observations align with models that indicate a fast-moving inner “spine” launched from the accretion disk’s innermost regions. Meanwhile, a slower outer “sheath” is also believed to emanate farther from the black hole. The combined outflow components produce an estimated 21 to 24 solar masses of material annually.

The Most Massive UFO Ever Observed? 

Such figures, the team says, represent what is believed to be among the most massive and energetic ultrafast outflows ever observed, a discovery which also marks the highest-redshift ultrafast outflow yet detected in a non-lensed quasar.

Despite their remarkable energetic output, the team says these outflow winds seem to conform to the same essential relationships observed in active galaxies much closer to Earth, suggesting that the processes driving these outflows have remained remarkably consistent across cosmic time.

Going forward, the team says they hope to make additional observations of these powerful cosmic phenomena with help from the new Athena X-ray mission, which they say could help uncover similar winds in even more distant quasars.

The team’s discoveries were detailed in a recent paper, “The WISSHFUL program: the highest redshift UFO discovered in a non-lensed QSO,” which appeared at the preprint arXiv.org server.

Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image features a galaxy cluster, called CL0016+1609 or MACS J0018.5+1626, that is very bright at X-ray wavelengths and is one of the most extensively studied clusters at X-ray and radio wavelengths. The X-ray observations of this cluster revealed that it is two clusters merging along our line of sight.

Researchers requested time to observe CL0016+1609 with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys because that data would help them accurately measure the cluster’s dark-matter distribution, which helps them study the merger and the role of CL0016+1609 in the large-scale structure of the universe. Hubble can’t directly see dark matter, but its infrared and visible light observations can detect dark matter’s gravitational lensing effects on the normal matter Hubble observes.

The data in this image also includes observations with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 taken as part of an observing program that obtained the first Hubble infrared images of 46 massive galaxy clusters and looked for distant galaxies gravitationally lensed by these clusters. Called RELICS (Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey), this survey found some 300 high-redshift candidate galaxies lensed by these clusters.

You can see the faint vertical arc of one of these distant galaxies in the image above. Look for it just to the left of the large elliptical galaxies in the center of the image. Another brighter, though shorter arc is visible just above and to the right of the large elliptical galaxies in the center of the image.

Media Contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov

A new study of two supernova remnants, the debris left behind after stars explode, suggests the explosions came from stellar siblings that once orbited each other. The first star’s detonation sent its binary companion hurtling through space, and then, after traveling for thousands of years, the surviving star blew up too.

“Using 16 years of data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, our analysis uncovered gamma rays associated with a supernova remnant that was hidden in the glare of its neighbor, the Jellyfish Nebula, one of the brightest gamma-ray-emitting supernova remnants known,” said Miltiadis Michailidis, a postdoctoral fellow in the physics department at Stanford University in California. “There are so many striking connections between the two remnants that we conclude they’re likely related, giving us the first known example of a binary system where both stars have undergone supernova explosions.”

Michailidis presented the findings Wednesday at the 248th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Pasadena, California. A paper describing the results will appear in a future edition of Nature Communications.

The study focused on a faint supernova remnant called G189.6+3.3, which is mainly visible in X-rays. It is upstaged by its brighter and better-known neighbor, the Jellyfish Nebula (IC 443). The two star wrecks, both located in the constellation Gemini, appear to partially overlap as seen in X-rays. Recent X-ray evidence suggests that hot plasma likely associated with G189.6+3.3 may extend across the entire region, a hint that the overlap may be nearly total.

A massive star explodes when its energy-producing core runs out of fuel and collapses under its own weight, triggering an explosion that blows the star apart. The explosion’s shock wave encloses a hot cloud of debris that rapidly expands into space. So far, astronomers have cataloged about 300 supernova remnants in our galaxy.  

The Fermi mission is part of NASA’s fleet of observatories monitoring the changing cosmos to help humanity better understand how the universe works. More than a decade ago, observations from Fermi’s LAT (Large Area Telescope) showed that the shock waves of supernova remnants accelerated particles to within a fraction of the speed of light, a process first proposed by physicist Enrico Fermi — the mission’s namesake — in 1949.

These high-speed particles, called cosmic rays, interact with interstellar gas to produce gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light. Protons make up 99% of cosmic ray particles. To prove that accelerated protons are responsible for the glow, astronomers search for a specific gamma-ray feature. When cosmic-ray protons smash into interstellar gas, they produce a short-lived particle called a neutral pion, which almost immediately decays into a pair of gamma rays. This emission occurs within a specific band of energies associated with the neutral pion’s mass and lies within the range detected by Fermi’s LAT instrument.

In 2013, Fermi observations proved that the Jellyfish Nebula, which is interacting with part of a glowing cloud of hydrogen gas known as Sharpless 249, produced gamma rays through this mechanism. Its neighbor, G189.6+3.3, was discovered in 1994 as part of an X-ray survey by the German-led ROSAT (Roentgen Satellite) mission.

A bright filament of gas lies between the overlapping remnants. New observations of this feature reveal that the shock wave from G189.6+3.3 slammed into dense interstellar gas there and dramatically slowed, key evidence that both remnants are interacting with the same cloud system.

Astronomers think the Jellyfish Nebula is also a candidate PeVatron, a cosmic particle accelerator capable of boosting protons to energies so high they could nearly escape our galaxy. Such particles can produce gamma rays with trillions of times more energy than visible light. Finding a second particle accelerator near the Jellyfish Nebula could offer scientists new clues for how supernova remnants develop into PeVatrons.

“The overlapping remnants, a connecting gas filament, and the availability of data from Fermi and other facilities motivated us to delve into this complex but little-studied region,” said co-author Marianne Lemoine-Goumard, an astrophysicist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) based at the University of Bordeaux. “With Fermi’s LAT instrument, we found gamma-ray emission associated with accelerated protons in the northern part of the fainter remnant. If both remnants are interacting with the same structure, then they must share a common distance from us.”

The team concludes the remnants lie about 6,000 light-years away, their explosion centers are separated by roughly 40 light-years projected onto the plane of the sky, and the original stars may have been 20 or more times the Sun’s mass.

Estimates of the remnants’ ages vary widely, but the team concludes that the age of the Jellyfish Nebula is 8,000 to 9,000 years, while G189.6+3.3 is between 20,000 to 110,000 years old. This means the delay between the explosions could have extended for up to 100,000 years.

In addition, the team conducted computer simulations of a million massive binary systems. They show that systems where the stars orbit close enough to exchange matter and interact during their lives can readily produce dual supernova explosions with similar separations and time delays as those found for the remnants. The team also estimated that the chance of randomly encountering this combination of observed spatial alignment and compatible distances to be less than 1%, strongly supporting a physical association.

“The evidence we’ve compiled — including observations across the spectrum, the chemical and physical properties of the remnants, simulations, and more — paints a compelling picture of a dual supernova event,” said Michailidis.

This study identifies a unique possible example of a binary system where both stars exploded as supernovae and left behind separate, detectable supernova remnants. Astronomers think that most massive stars form in binary or multiple-star systems. The Jellyfish Nebula/G189.6+3.3 complex offers astronomers a rare opportunity to study how massive binary stars evolve, exchange matter, explode, and experience velocity changes — called kicks — induced by the supernova blast. It also provides a powerful new laboratory for understanding how coupled supernova remnants behave, including how they accelerate particles, generate gamma rays, and shape their surrounding environments.

“Fermi’s gamma-ray observations of supernova remnants continue to reveal the dynamic lives of stars,” said Elizabeth Hays, the Fermi project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We can now connect the glowing remains of two massive stars to a powerful pair that evolved together over thousands of years.”

By Francis Reddy
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli
301-286-1940
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image features a galaxy cluster, called CL0016+1609 or MACS J0018.5+1626, that is very bright at X-ray wavelengths and is one of the most extensively studied clusters at X-ray and radio wavelengths. The X-ray observations of this cluster revealed that it is two clusters merging along our line of sight.

Researchers requested time to observe CL0016+1609 with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys because that data would help them accurately measure the cluster’s dark-matter distribution, which helps them study the merger and the role of CL0016+1609 in the large-scale structure of the universe. Hubble can’t directly see dark matter, but its infrared and visible light observations can detect dark matter’s gravitational lensing effects on the normal matter Hubble observes.

The data in this image also includes observations with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 taken as part of an observing program that obtained the first Hubble infrared images of 46 massive galaxy clusters and looked for distant galaxies gravitationally lensed by these clusters. Called RELICS (Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey), this survey found some 300 high-redshift candidate galaxies lensed by these clusters.

You can see the faint vertical arc of one of these distant galaxies in the image above. Look for it just to the left of the large elliptical galaxies in the center of the image. Another brighter, though shorter arc is visible just above and to the right of the large elliptical galaxies in the center of the image.

Media Contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov

The post Hubble Glimpses Merging Galaxy Clusters appeared first on NASA Science.

Someone's thrash is another one's treasure - this old saying has an entirely different meaning for an octopus.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis reportedly lobbied for a US-led coalition to shape global AI rules, as Anthropic remained locked in negotiations with the Trump administration over export controls on its newest models.

CNBC reported that during a closed-door lunch at the G7 Summit attended by President Donald Trump and other world leaders, Amodei called for international cooperation to cover structured access to frontier models, a chip and critical components trade framework which excludes China and coordinated responses to AI risks in cybersecurity, bioterrorism and intelligence.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also called for a formal international forum to establish globally accepted testing standards, provide impartial analysis of AI capabilities and risks, and serve as a venue for cooperation among nations, according to an OpenAI briefing.

The outlet reported Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney agreed the US could lead such a coalition, according to people familiar with the discussions.

In addition to Trump, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were also in attendance.

Anthropic ban
The backdrop of the AI discussions was the export controls imposed by the Trump administration on Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models, which went into effect on 12 June after the government cited national security concerns.

News sites have reported Anthropic is currently in negotiations with the Trump administration over the directive.

Financial Times (FT) reported the US decision alarmed European governments and Silicon Valley alike, while raising concerns even allied nations could be cut off from cutting-edge AI.

French President Emmanuel Macron stated the Anthropic dispute clarified what was at stake, warning if the US could “from one day to the next turn off the switch” it would ultimately damage the multitrillion-dollar US companies leading the global AI race.

Macron called for stronger AI regulation and a platform for democratic cooperation to establish common standards. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated democratic nations needed access to frontier models to protect critical infrastructure, according to people familiar with the discussions.

The post Tech bosses urge G7 to back US-led AI group appeared first on Mobile World Live.

JCMT0402-0424, a dusty starburst galaxy around 11 billion light-years away, is the strongest candidate yet for the source of the high-energy neutrino event IC 210922A, according to a team of astronomer led by Yuji Urata of MITOS Science Co.

The post Astronomers Trace Elusive High-Energy Neutrino to Star-Forming Galaxy in Early Universe appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

Using NASA’s Goldstone Solar System Radar and NSF’s Green Bank Telescope, astronomers from the University of California, Los Angeles, confirmed that the icy surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa scatters radio energy in an unusually strong and complex way not seen on rocky worlds.

The post Radar Observations Reveal New Clues about Europa’s Hidden Interior appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

A new study of two supernova remnants, the debris left behind after stars explode, suggests the explosions came from stellar siblings that once orbited each other. The first star’s detonation sent its binary companion hurtling through space, and then, after traveling for thousands of years, the surviving star blew up too.

“Using 16 years of data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, our analysis uncovered gamma rays associated with a supernova remnant that was hidden in the glare of its neighbor, the Jellyfish Nebula, one of the brightest gamma-ray-emitting supernova remnants known,” said Miltiadis Michailidis, a postdoctoral fellow in the physics department at Stanford University in California. “There are so many striking connections between the two remnants that we conclude they’re likely related, giving us the first known example of a binary system where both stars have undergone supernova explosions.”

Michailidis presented the findings Wednesday at the 248th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Pasadena, California. A paper describing the results will appear in a future edition of Nature Communications.

The study focused on a faint supernova remnant called G189.6+3.3, which is mainly visible in X-rays. It is upstaged by its brighter and better-known neighbor, the Jellyfish Nebula (IC 443). The two star wrecks, both located in the constellation Gemini, appear to partially overlap as seen in X-rays. Recent X-ray evidence suggests that hot plasma likely associated with G189.6+3.3 may extend across the entire region, a hint that the overlap may be nearly total.

A massive star explodes when its energy-producing core runs out of fuel and collapses under its own weight, triggering an explosion that blows the star apart. The explosion’s shock wave encloses a hot cloud of debris that rapidly expands into space. So far, astronomers have cataloged about 300 supernova remnants in our galaxy.  

The Fermi mission is part of NASA’s fleet of observatories monitoring the changing cosmos to help humanity better understand how the universe works. More than a decade ago, observations from Fermi’s LAT (Large Area Telescope) showed that the shock waves of supernova remnants accelerated particles to within a fraction of the speed of light, a process first proposed by physicist Enrico Fermi — the mission’s namesake — in 1949.

These high-speed particles, called cosmic rays, interact with interstellar gas to produce gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light. Protons make up 99% of cosmic ray particles. To prove that accelerated protons are responsible for the glow, astronomers search for a specific gamma-ray feature. When cosmic-ray protons smash into interstellar gas, they produce a short-lived particle called a neutral pion, which almost immediately decays into a pair of gamma rays. This emission occurs within a specific band of energies associated with the neutral pion’s mass and lies within the range detected by Fermi’s LAT instrument.

In 2013, Fermi observations proved that the Jellyfish Nebula, which is interacting with part of a glowing cloud of hydrogen gas known as Sharpless 249, produced gamma rays through this mechanism. Its neighbor, G189.6+3.3, was discovered in 1994 as part of an X-ray survey by the German-led ROSAT (Roentgen Satellite) mission.

A bright filament of gas lies between the overlapping remnants. New observations of this feature reveal that the shock wave from G189.6+3.3 slammed into dense interstellar gas there and dramatically slowed, key evidence that both remnants are interacting with the same cloud system.

Astronomers think the Jellyfish Nebula is also a candidate PeVatron, a cosmic particle accelerator capable of boosting protons to energies so high they could nearly escape our galaxy. Such particles can produce gamma rays with trillions of times more energy than visible light. Finding a second particle accelerator near the Jellyfish Nebula could offer scientists new clues for how supernova remnants develop into PeVatrons.

“The overlapping remnants, a connecting gas filament, and the availability of data from Fermi and other facilities motivated us to delve into this complex but little-studied region,” said co-author Marianne Lemoine-Goumard, an astrophysicist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) based at the University of Bordeaux. “With Fermi’s LAT instrument, we found gamma-ray emission associated with accelerated protons in the northern part of the fainter remnant. If both remnants are interacting with the same structure, then they must share a common distance from us.”

The team concludes the remnants lie about 6,000 light-years away, their explosion centers are separated by roughly 40 light-years projected onto the plane of the sky, and the original stars may have been 20 or more times the Sun’s mass.

Estimates of the remnants’ ages vary widely, but the team concludes that the age of the Jellyfish Nebula is 8,000 to 9,000 years, while G189.6+3.3 is between 20,000 to 110,000 years old. This means the delay between the explosions could have extended for up to 100,000 years.

In addition, the team conducted computer simulations of a million massive binary systems. They show that systems where the stars orbit close enough to exchange matter and interact during their lives can readily produce dual supernova explosions with similar separations and time delays as those found for the remnants. The team also estimated that the chance of randomly encountering this combination of observed spatial alignment and compatible distances to be less than 1%, strongly supporting a physical association.

“The evidence we’ve compiled — including observations across the spectrum, the chemical and physical properties of the remnants, simulations, and more — paints a compelling picture of a dual supernova event,” said Michailidis.

This study identifies a unique possible example of a binary system where both stars exploded as supernovae and left behind separate, detectable supernova remnants. Astronomers think that most massive stars form in binary or multiple-star systems. The Jellyfish Nebula/G189.6+3.3 complex offers astronomers a rare opportunity to study how massive binary stars evolve, exchange matter, explode, and experience velocity changes — called kicks — induced by the supernova blast. It also provides a powerful new laboratory for understanding how coupled supernova remnants behave, including how they accelerate particles, generate gamma rays, and shape their surrounding environments.

“Fermi’s gamma-ray observations of supernova remnants continue to reveal the dynamic lives of stars,” said Elizabeth Hays, the Fermi project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We can now connect the glowing remains of two massive stars to a powerful pair that evolved together over thousands of years.”

By Francis Reddy
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli
301-286-1940
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

The post NASA’s Fermi Mission Uncovers Possible Sibling Supernova Remnants appeared first on NASA Science.

European Commission (EC) President Ursula von der Leyen (pictured) called for closer US-European Union (EU) cooperation on AI at the G7 Summit currently being held in France, arguing both sides have a shared interest in accelerating adoption and ensuring powerful models are introduced safely.

In a post on X following a roundtable with partner countries and AI business executives, von der Leyen stated AI is “developing exponentially” and described it as “the most important technology of our time”. She said the technology “comes with immense potential, but also risks for free, democratic societies”, adding Europe and the US should work together because they “represent 70% of the world market”.

According to Reuters, von der Leyen framed AI safety as a shared interest, stating: “We use each other’s trusted technology, and our financial systems are interconnected. “It is in our mutual interest that our citizens and companies can safely use the best AI models,” she added.

New models
The remarks follow a US government order issued earlier this week directing Anthropic to suspend access to its most advanced AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, for foreign nationals over national security concerns.

Although the Trump administration’s letter targeted foreign nationals, Anthropic said compliance would have required verifying the nationality of every user. It therefore shut both models down entirely for all customers.

In an AI sovereignty push earlier this week, French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu argued: “We cannot rely on the goodwill of certain partners who, as we have seen in recent days, are capable of cutting off access to the Anthropic model.”

On the issue, von der Leyen said at the summit “the key question of today is how to introduce new models safely,” calling for G7 countries to exchange information and cooperate through independent entities evaluating models before market release.

She also highlighted adoption as a competitive priority, stating Europe and the US are “at par in terms of AI adoption” but that the bloc wants “our own AI future, not in isolation – that is very important – but together with our trusted partners”.

The post US-EU AI cooperation in focus at G7 Summit appeared first on Mobile World Live.

A burial site uncovered by archaeologists in southern Siberia has revealed a series of unusual discoveries, which include ritually broken artifacts surrounding human and horse remains.

The burial site was uncovered in the Sayan Mountains and was discovered during a survey in advance of railway construction planned for the area. Archaeologists believe that the grave dates to the tenth century.

Originally uncovered in 2014, excavations at the site of the unusual grave and several others found nearby have been ongoing, revealing discoveries that researchers say are unusual for the period and location.

“It is quite clear that this is far from an ordinary burial,” according to Andrey Poliakov, a researcher with the Russian Academy of Sciences and one of the co-authors of a new study detailing the findings, which appeared in Bulletin of Novosibirsk State University, Series: History, Philology.

Curious Discoveries in a Siberian Grave

Among the unusual discoveries in the Siberian grave were human remains—those belonging to a woman, as well as a newborn child—and animal remains belonging to a horse, including the creature’s skull, skin, and limbs, and a spine that belonged to a sheep.

The woman’s remains were also accompanied by several artifacts, which included bronze earrings, a spindle whorl crafted from stone, and an iron knife. Also associated with the woman’s remains was a mirror, which archaeologists believe may have been intentionally broken for ritual purposes—a practice maintained by many ancient cultures throughout the world.

Eastern Connections

Also of interest was the design of the mirror, which features carvings of a vine that winds along the artifact and clusters of grapes. The research team believes this could indicate that this artifact, and possibly some of the others found in the grave, may have originated from China.

Additionally, the researchers report that items associated with the remains of the horse contained within the burial site are associated with older periods, which would have made them antiques at the time they were included within the grave. Another example of artifacts with possible eastern origins includes a stirrup, which features decorations that bear resemblance to ancient art found in China and India.

Such stirrups were often employed by nomads who once dwelt on the Eurasian Steppe, and featured on the left side of their saddles—a position which archaeologists also believe may have held ritual significance.

An Elite Burial from the 10th Century

According to the researchers in their study, “The entire set of items constitutes a complete set of riding horse equipment,” which they say has “an archaic appearance and could be preserved for a long time as ‘family heirlooms’.”

The researchers add that such items were particularly popular in ancient nomadic society along the Eurasian Steppe and were viewed “as an indicator of social prestige” during the 8th and 9th centuries.

The unusual collection of artifacts within the grave was considered a rare find for this region, although further interpretation about the remains of the woman and the infant, which may had been her child, may be required.

The paper, “Riding Horse Equipment from a Medieval Burial on the Idzhim River in the Usinskaya Basin,” by Andrey Poliakov and colleagues, appeared in Bulletin of Novosibirsk State University, Series: History, Philology.

Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.

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