A collaboration of researchers in North America has reported their findings from the first diagnostic X-ray imaging performed in space. X-ray images recorded during an orbital spaceflight exhibited similar overall quality to those taken preflight on Earth, demonstrating the feasibility of adding radiography as a diagnostic tool for crew health.

With humans venturing further into space and spending more time in this harsh environment, the risk of adverse medical events increases. Accurate and timely diagnosis and treatment is a must-have. Currently, the only reliable medical imaging modality available to astronauts in spaceflight is ultrasonography – which is operator dependent, requires substantial training and relies on limited acoustic windows.

X-ray imaging, on the other hand, benefits from low operator dependence, rapid acquisition and typically higher spatial resolution than ultrasound. Digital radiography could also offer superior diagnostic capabilities for many medical conditions of concern during spaceflight, including dental disease, musculoskeletal trauma, inhalational injury, collapsed lung and arthritis.

Traditional X-ray scanning systems are bulky, produce a lot of radiation and are sensitive to motion – making them less than ideal for sending into space. But a new generation of portable X-ray scanners shows potential to survive the spaceflight and be operated by crew members with minimal training.

“It’s been a dream for aerospace medicine to have more than one imaging modality for diagnosing illnesses and injuries in space,” says lead researcher Sheyna Gifford, an assistant professor of aerospace medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, in a press statement.

Scanning in space

In a study led by co-author David Lerner, the researchers first demonstrated the feasibility of X-ray imaging in simulated microgravity in 2022. During a parabolic flight, they used a commercial off-the-shelf digital radiography system to successfully capture radiographs of a human subject and a phantom during lunar gravity (1/6g), Martian gravity (1/3g) and microgravity.

In this latest project, reported in in Radiology, Gifford and her team investigated the performance of a similar portable digital radiography system aboard the Dragon spacecraft, during the Fram2 spaceflight mission, a 3.5-day polar orbital flight launched on 31 March 2025 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The imaging system comprised a commercial off-the-shelf, FDA-cleared, portable, digital X-ray generator (Impact Wireless; MinXray) along with an FDA-cleared flat-panel detector.

Prior to the mission, three crew members received 4 hr of training on the portable X-ray system and acquired preflight X-ray images of the hand, forearm, abdomen, pelvis, chest and a quality control phantom. They then recorded the same anatomic and phantom images whilst in space, and also imaged a smartwatch to investigate the potential for non-destructive testing.

During anatomic imaging, the devices were handheld by the crew members, while the phantom and smartwatch were secured to the detector for imaging. The crew reported that they found it easy to use the X-ray system and follow the imaging protocols.

Back on Earth

To assess the quality of the seven X-ray images acquired by the crew, three independent radiologists evaluated and compared the preflight and in-flight anatomic radiographs, finding no differences in overall image quality, contrast resolution or spatial resolution. For central-body radiographs (chest, abdomen and pelvis), image positioning was worse in-flight than preflight. Despite this, all X-rays achieved good or near-excellent diagnostic quality (rated on a  5-point Likert scale).

Phantom radiographs recorded in space exhibited good spatial and contrast resolution, imaging low-contrast targets down to the smallest 2-mm target and easily visualizing high-contrast meshes ranging from 20 to 60 lines per inch, with 80 lines per inch remaining visible. The smartwatch radiograph clearly showed the watch’s internal components at the submillimetre scale.

The research team found that the X-ray generator had sustained minor re-entry damage, but its internal components and X-ray output were not affected. Similarly, the detector passed visual inspection and quality control tests. The researchers also recorded a set of postflight X-rays (on non-crewmembers) following the same in-flight protocols. These showed no qualitative differences from the preflight or in-flight radiographs.

“By acquiring the first human and equipment X-rays in space, our study demonstrates the feasibility of in-orbit radiography and expanded diagnostic capabilities for crew health and hardware evaluation,” says Gifford. “Acquiring diagnostically useful X-rays in space is something that anyone can do. Three very talented nonmedical people with four hours of training in one of the harshest environments did it right and did it well.”

Gifford points out that a spaceflight-ready radiography system could also prove indispensable for mission-critical non-medical tasks. “For sustained human presence in space, X-rays are critical not just for crew members but also for other mission components like electronics and spacesuits. The only way to look inside these objects without taking them apart is to X-ray them,” she explains.

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A compact optical technology that has already proved its worth in Earth-bound applications could be on its way to space after researchers at the University of California San Diego, US showed that it can map the Sun’s magnetic field just as well as traditional instruments. By making polarization gratings from specially engineered metasurfaces rather than a complex assembly of optics, the researchers say that future solar-observing missions could benefit from reduced complexity and cost as well as size.

“Our work makes use of recent advancements in nanoscale optical technologies to help improve the hardware for making astronomical observations of the Sun,” says study leader Noah Rubin of UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering. “We believe this is one of the first times that metasurface optics – which have been a subject of intense interest in both academic research and industry for about a decade – have been used to improve scientific instrumentation of any kind outside of a lab/academic proof-of-concept.”

Polarized light and solar magnetic fields

Although light emitted by the Sun is generally unpolarized – that is, the light waves do not vibrate along a particular axis – strong magnetic fields that develop near sunspots can polarize this light via the quantum mechanical Zeeman effect. These magnetic fields are closely associated with space weather events such as solar storms that can damage electronic infrastructure both on Earth and in orbit. Studying the Sun’s magnetic activity by monitoring areas of polarized light is thus an important step towards detecting or predicting such storms in time to take protective action.

Usually, measuring the polarization state of light means analysing different polarization directions using a device such as a waveplate that mechanically rotates between exposures. Rubin compares this process to taking several photographs through polarized sunglasses held at different angles, then combining them to obtain a fuller picture of what’s going on.

While this technique works, and instruments that use it have already been sent into space, the image analysis process is very time-consuming. It also requires an external power source, and the need to mechanically rotate the waveplate introduces extra complexity and cost, says Rubin.

“In space-based applications, a satellite itself can be moving while this component reorients, causing a highly undesirable blurring effect,” he explains. “As a result, designers of these systems often invest considerable resources into mechanical remediation and engineering to correct the motion of the telescope on the satellite, and this frequently ends up being substantially more expensive than the telescope optics themselves.”

A metasurface solution

In the new study, which is detailed in Science Advances, Rubin and colleagues solved this problem by creating a polarization-sensitive metasurface that splits light into its different polarization components. A camera-like system containing this metasurface polarization grating can then form multiple images of a scene in parallel. Rubin explains that each image in this scene is analysed with respect to a different polarization state, meaning that the system can measure the polarization of light simultaneously and passively in a single camera frame.

Rubin notes that this technique of condensing an instrument that would ordinarily involve a complex assembly of optics into a single, flat surface has previously made its way into applications as diverse as facial recognition in mobile phones and the preparation of complex photon states in quantum optics experiments. “In this work, we show that these advantages translate to polarization imaging in astronomy,” he tells Physics World.

Comparable results

Working with industrial partners at BAE Systems Space & Mission Systems in Colorado, US (formerly known as Ball Aerospace, which Rubin describes as “well-known for its involvement in the development of the James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble and countless other NASA missions”), the team designed a specialized telescope built around such a metasurface polarization grating. They also deployed their instrument on the Dunn Solar Telescope in New Mexico, US, and showed that they could quantitatively map the magnetic fields in sunspots by capturing simultaneous polarization images of these spots.

The researchers report that their results were comparable to those obtained by the state-of-the-art NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory mission in-orbit, highlighting what Rubin calls “the significant advantages that these metasurface components can offer when designed in conjunction with more traditional optical systems”. The UC San Diego team is now exploring ways of integrating its technology into future NASA solar-observing space missions.

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A galaxy that formed around a billion years after the Big Bang is in its death throes thanks to a powerful galactic wind that is blasting its gas into space, say astronomers at Australia’s Swinburne University of Technology. The discovery, which is based on data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, could help explain why some of the universe’s earliest massive galaxies ceased to form new stars.

One of the JWST’s most surprising discoveries is that when the universe was between one and two billion years old, it already contained large numbers of massive galaxies. Astronomers think these galaxies may have acquired most of their mass in intense bursts of star formation. But at some point, that process stopped: in technical terms, the galaxies became quiescent.

“These galaxies seemed to have formed all their stars very quickly and then they suddenly died, all within the first two billion years of the universe being formed,” says Rebecca Davies, who led the new research.

The CRISTAL-02 galaxy

One possible explanation for the onset of quiescence is that when galaxies collide with each other, the resulting winds “blow away” the hydrogen fuel required for new stars to form. To investigate this hypothesis, Davies and colleagues focused on a galaxy called CRISTAL-02, which was one of 20 galaxies in the recent ALMA-CRISTAL survey of early star-forming galaxies.

“When we looked at the data, it stood out because it was the only one that showed strong evidence for a galaxy wind,” Davies explains. “We saw this as an excellent opportunity to study how winds impacted the evolution of galaxies in the early universe.”

The light from CRISTAL-02 travelled for approximately 12.7 billion years to reach us, meaning that we see it as it was one billion years after the Big Bang. Because the universe has been expanding since then, the galaxy’s spectra appear highly red-shifted. This meant the Swinburne astronomers needed the JWST’s infrared-sensing capabilities to analyse a spectral feature known as the hydrogen-alpha (Hα) line that is normally red. They also used ALMA to analyse CRISTAL-02’s C II line, which comes from ionized carbon and has a (non-redshifted) wavelength of 158 mm. Both emission lines can yield important information about the properties of early galaxies.

Living fast and dying young

From the ALMA-CRISTAL survey’s measurements of Hα luminosity, astronomers knew that CRISTAL-02 forms stars at a rate of around 260 M_☉ per year. This is about three times the average value for “main-sequence” star-forming galaxies at similar mass and redshifts.

The latest observations, however, suggest that it won’t maintain this pace for long. Davies and colleagues identified a huge plume of C II emissions that extends as far as 7 kiloparsecs (kpc) to the north-east of CRISTAL-02, making it almost as long as the galaxy itself. This is a telltale sign that gas is being driven out of the galaxy. The fact that the gas in this plume is blue-shifted by 100 km s^-1 lends further support to this explanation.

If this rapid blowout continues, Davies says that CRISTAL-02 will cease to exist in less than 50 million years. But the team’s findings may have implications beyond the fate of this single galaxy. “Our results could help to explain how some of the earliest massive quiescent galaxies in the universe behave,” she tells Physics World. “When the JWST started observing distant galaxies in 2022, it found far more evolved galaxies in the early universe than models predicted. These galaxies seemed to have formed all their stars very quickly and then suddenly died, all within the first two billion years of the universe. The galaxy we discovered seems to be following this path.”

Learning about the early universe

Davies explains that because the early universe was much more compact than it is now, collisions between galaxies were common. During such collisions, gas funnels towards the galactic centres, triggering strong bursts of star formation but also producing strong winds that eventually drive the gas away. “If many early galaxies collide and experience rapid growth, then it may not be surprising at all that we see so many dead galaxies in the early universe,” she says.

The researchers stress that the present work, which is detailed in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, is based on a case study of just one galaxy. They now need to observe other early, massive galaxies caught during periods of intense growth to determine whether they, too, experience powerful winds that could rapidly expel their gas and stop them from forming stars.

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The Nobel-prize-winning Belgian theoretical physicist François Englert, whose work led to the discovery of the Higgs boson, died on 18 June at the age of 93.

Englert’s studies, which he carried out in the early 1960s with his colleague Robert Brout, demonstrated that fundamental particles can acquire mass by interacting with a field that permeates the universe. The work set in motion a decades-long hunt for the Higgs boson, which was finally discovered at the CERN particle-physics lab near Geneva in 2012.

For the work, Englert shared half of the 2013 Nobel Prize for Physics together with the British theoretical physicist Peter Higgs, who died in 2024.

Born in Brussels, Belgium, on 6 November 1932, Englert studied electrical engineering at the Free University of Brussels (ULB) before switching to physics and completing a PhD at the university in 1959.

For two years he then worked at Cornell University before returning to ULB in 1961, where he remained for the rest of his career.

New particle

“Spontaneous symmetry breaking” is a well-known concept in condensed-matter physics where it had been used to explain how, for example, unordered regions of a magnetic material could suddenly align themselves in a specific direction.

In the early 1960s, the Japanese–American particle physicist Yoichiro Nambu adapted the phenomenon into quantum field theory.

Working at the ULB, Englert and Brout took inspiration from Nambu’s work and in 1964 the pair proposed that the weak and electromagnetic interactions could be united by spontaneous symmetry breaking.

Higgs, who independently came to the same conclusion as Brout and Englert, showed that the particles that carried the weak force acquired their mass through interactions with an all-pervasive field, now known as the Higgs field with the interactions occurring via the Higgs boson.

In 2012 at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, physicists working on the LHC’s giant ATLAS and CMS detectors discovered the Higgs boson with a mass of about 125 GeV.

The following year, Englert shared half of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics with Higgs “for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments”.

Brout died in 2011 so was not given the Nobel prize as it is not awarded posthumously.

As well as the Nobel prize, Englert won many other awards including the Francqui Prize, awarded by the Francqui Foundation in 1982, the Wolf Prize in Physics (2004) and the American Physical Society J J Sakurai Prize (2010). In 2013, he was ennobled a baron by King Albert II of Belgium.

Particle physicist John Ellis from King’s College London, who has spent most of his career at CERN, told Physics World that he will remember Englert for his “his modest and polite demeanour, despite his evident and justified pride in his ground-breaking work”.

“His memory lives on as one of the founders of the Standard Model and an originator of one of its greatest puzzles, the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism for breaking symmetries and generating particle masses,” adds Ellis. “How long will it be before we understand this remarkable, yet crucial, aspect of Nature?”

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Black carbon particles released by rocket launches remain in the upper atmosphere for much longer than sooty particles produced by sources on the ground. This finding, which comes from a study led by researchers at University College London (UCL), UK, suggests that the soot created in deploying “megaconstellations” containing hundreds or thousands of satellites could have poorly understood and potentially serious consequences for the Earth’s climate.

“Rocket launches are a unique source of pollution, injecting harmful chemicals directly into the upper layers of the atmosphere and contaminating Earth’s last remaining relatively pristine environment,” says the study’s lead author, UCL atmospheric chemist Connor Barker.

The number of rockets being launched into space has increased dramatically since 2019, and the trend shows few signs of stopping. This year has already seen more launches than the whole of 2020, and space industry experts believe the eventual total could surpass 2025’s figure of 329. The increase has primarily been driven by the Falcon 9 rockets launched by the US firm SpaceX, though China also logged a record 92 launch attempts in 2025.

“An unregulated geoengineering experiment”

In the new work, Barker and colleagues analysed data from rocket launches and satellite re-entries from 2020 to 2022. Their results, which they detail in Earth’s Future, show that the soot particles lingering in the upper atmosphere are 540 times more effective at altering climate than ground-based soot emissions from sources such as cars and power plants.

“Space industry pollution is like an unregulated geoengineering experiment,” says Barker. Soot particles from burning kerosene in rocket fuel absorb sunlight, he explains, which prevents it from reaching the Earth’s surface. The result is a small cooling effect, which might sound like a good thing in the context of rising global temperatures. However, Barker stresses that this cooling is minimal compared to the global warming caused by other human-generated emissions, while the particles themselves could have “many other serious unintended consequences”.

Predictions likely to underestimate future impact

As well as quantifying recent space industry emissions, the researchers make predictions about future ones. According to their calculations, by 2029 the space industry will be releasing about 870 tonnes of soot into the atmosphere each year. By way of comparison, Baker notes that according to the latest UK government figures, the annual emissions of the country’s entire passenger car fleet amounted to just 728 tonnes.

The team based its predictions on projections of data from 2020-2022, which is considered the beginning of the megaconstellation satellite era. Because of this, Barker cautions that they are likely to be underestimates, making the problem even more urgent. “It is critical that we understand the environmental impacts of satellite megaconstellations now while their impact is small, before any unforeseen consequences are difficult to reverse or repair,” he tells Physics World.

While scientists have made great progress in the last few years, Baker says that are still large uncertainties in our emission estimates for the industry and our understanding of how they affect the atmosphere. “We hope that this work spurs further research to measure space industry emissions and highlights the need to regulate the geoengineering impacts of the space industry,” he says.

Team leader Eloise Marais, a professor of atmospheric chemistry and air quality at UCL, echoes this sentiment. “So far, there has been limited effort to effectively regulate this type of pollution,” she says.

The researchers are now working on an emissions tracker to visualize these emissions across the entire space age. “We are also using satellite imagery to remotely detect and quantify rocket launch emissions,” Barker reveals.

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Thanks to new “transit” observations of the hot Jupiter exoplanet WASP-94A b using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), researchers at Johns Hopkins University in the US have discovered a striking weather pattern on this distant world. Their work could help provide a clearer picture of the atmospheres on exoplanets, which has been very limited until now.

When an exoplanet passes in front of (or transits) its host star, some of the light from that star passes through the planet’s atmosphere. By detecting this light using telescopes, either ground-based or in space, astronomers are able to obtain the exoplanet’s atmospheric light spectrum.

A team led by Sagnick Mukherjee and David Sing has now analysed data on WASP-94A b from the space-based JWST and have found that the mornings on this exoplanet are extremely cloudy – with water absorption features in the spectrum – while its evenings are very clear. Clouds likely form on the planet’s colder, permanent nightside where temperatures are low enough for minerals to condense. Winds then carry those clouds towards the morning limb (the leading edge of the atmosphere), explains Mukherjee.

“As these cloud particles are dragged farther toward the hotter dayside, the clouds evaporate or sink deeper, leaving the evening side much clearer,” he says. “This is a clear discovery of a planet-wide cloud cycle in action on a distant exoplanet.”

Part of a broader survey

The researchers, who detail their findings in Science, decided to study WASP-94A b as part of a broader survey of exoplanet atmospheres with the JWST called the “Grand Tour Program”. The goal of this project, says Mukherjee, is to better understand the composition of these exoplanets and the physical processes at play in their atmospheres.

One of the main difficulties encountered during such observations is how small the signals that we are trying to look at are, he explains. However, in this case, the asymmetry between the morning and evening side of the planet was rather dramatic, which made it possible to separately probe the two.

Until now, researchers only had access to a single averaged spectrum of WASP-94A b – and indeed most other exoplanets studied over the last decade –from observations made by the Hubble telescope, for example. The chemical composition of the exoplanet’s atmosphere was therefore highly biased, says Mukherjee, and it was thought that the levels of oxygen and carbon there were hundreds of times higher than on the Sun. “This finding baffled us because this result could not be explained by planet formation theories. The new data show that WASP-94A b only contains only about five times as much oxygen and carbon.”

“Being able to resolve the cloudy morning and clear evening separately therefore gives us a much cleaner view of what the atmosphere is actually made of,” Mukherjee tells Physics World. “And this is not just relevant to hot-Jupiters like WASP-94A b, but might be extended to all exoplanet atmospheres that we are trying to understand using the transit method.”

“One of the most exciting aspects”

For Mukherjee, this is one of the most exciting aspects of the JWST era. “We are taking a step beyond simply detecting the atmospheres of distant planets and are now beginning to map their weather, chemistry, and three-dimensional structure in extraordinary detail.”

Indeed, using WASP-94A b as a benchmark, the Johns Hopkins team has already studied eight other hot gas giants and discovered the same distinctive cloud cycle on two other worlds: WASP-39 b and WASP-17 b. “Inspired by these observations, our collaboration, co-led by David Sing, myself and our colleague Guangwei Fu, is about to receive more than 180 hours of new JWST data to understand weather on diverse exoplanets and measure how their weather and cloud-coverage vary with planet temperature and gravity,” reveals Mukherjee.

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The most precise calculation of the muon’s anomalous magnetic moment to date has put to rest the possibility of that property revealing new physics beyond the Standard Model – at least for now. The new result, from an international team of physicists, was obtained using a new method to calculate this anomaly that is based on lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD).

In the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics, which is currently our best theory of the fundamental forces of nature (barring gravity), the muon is an elementary particle. It belongs to the same family (of quarks and leptons) as the electron, but is more than 200 times heavier. The muon interacts with other SM particles via two of the fundamental forces – electromagnetism and the weak force.

Quarks and leptons all possess a magnetic moment that comes from their intrinsic angular momentum, or spin, and quantum theory posits that this magnetic moment is related to the spin by the “g-factor”. This quantity was originally calculated to be equal to exactly two for both the electron and muon.

Experiments over the last 50 years have detected minute deviations from this number, however. This difference, of roughly 0.1 %, is known as the “anomalous g-factor”, a_µ = (g – 2)/2, and it comes from so-called radiative corrections – the continuous emission and re-absorption of short-lived “virtual particles” by electrons and muons.

Measuring such discrepancies is very important for physicists because the g-factor could point to the existence of other particles – both known and as-yet undiscovered – so hinting at physics beyond the SM. They can do this thanks to the muon. Since this particle is so heavy compared to the electron, the impact of virtual particles acting on it is significantly greater. This enhanced sensitivity means that measuring the muon g−2 is better for searching for new physics than the electron g−2.

Difficult measurements and calculations

The problem is that such calculations are not easy – all the more so because the muon’s magnetic moment also receives contributions from the strong force as well as the electromagnetic and weak interactions (even though the muon does not itself partake in strong interactions). These strong contributions come from the muon interacting with the photon, which in turn interacts with quarks that then themselves interact via the gluon — the mediator of the strong-force.

The strong force (which is responsible for binding quarks into protons, neutrons and other hadrons) is notoriously difficult to integrate into theoretical calculations, however, because it is so strong.

In the new work, the researchers overcame this problem using lattice QCD of the most uncertain theoretical contribution to the muon g−2 – the “leading-order hadronic vacuum polarization” (LO-HVP), which has been traditionally determined using experimental data. Lattice QCD, they explain, is a computational technique that simulates the strong force on supercomputers by dividing space-time into a fine grid or lattice of small cells. The equations of the strong interaction are then solved on this lattice.

To reach the level of precision required to calculate the muon g−2, the researchers improved on their previous lattice calculation using finer grids and also combined it with experimental data in the very long-distance interaction region. This hybrid approach dramatically reduced errors, so allowing for the most precise value of the muon magnetic moment ever.

“Our result together with the other contributions yields a prediction that combines three interactions (the electromagnetic, weak and strong forces), each of which require vastly different theoretical tools, into a single calculation that differs from the recent experimental measurement of a_μ by only 0.5 standard deviations,” says Kalman Szabo of Penn State University in the US, who is a lead researcher on the team. “This provides a notable validation of the Standard Model to 11 digits.”

The original goal in their latest work, he explains, was to have an unambiguous and ab initio pure theoretical work to calculate the magnetic moment of the muon. “When we started, there were very strong signs that there was a tension between experiment and theory in this quantity, which would mean the presence of a new interaction.”

No tension and no new interaction

“Confirming this tension would have been – with some bias from our side – the ‘fundamental discovery of the century’”, he says. “In the end, however, our study shows that there is no tension. Thus, we did not find the new interaction but proved that quantum theory holds with an unprecedented accuracy.”

The result does not mean that new physics has been ruled out, however, he adds. Future experiments and calculations will help clarify the picture, but for now, the Standard Model holds strong.

“We now have a beautiful proof of quantum field theory and this gives credibility to any further work based on this theory,” he tells Physics World. “The accuracy is astonishing, which gives hope to answer other questions related to the strong interaction with similar or even better accuracies.

“Indeed, other groups are now racing to try to validate (or refute) our result, something that can only beneficial for the advance of our field in general.”

The research is described in Nature.

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Pour les 25 ans de Futura, nos journalistes racontent une image qui a marqué leur regard sur ce premier quart de siècle. En 2019-2020, l’Australie traverse son terrible « été noir ». Pendant des mois, des incendies gigantesques dévorent le pays et donnent naissance à des images qui marqueront...

Superheroes came out in force for SDCC day two.

Un internaute a découvert qu’un satellite de télécommunication Starlink de SpaceX est passé devant un satellite d’imagerie de la surface Terre pendant qu’il survolait le Texas. L’image a été retrouvée sur Google Earth. Que nous dit cet événement pas si anodin que cela ?

The Last Person on Earth will bring a different kind of dating experiment to Apple TV, pairing people who appear fundamentally incompatible before sending them to some of the world most romantic and isolated destinations.

Apple announced the eight-episode documentary series with Esther Perel, the bestselling author, psychotherapist and relationship expert known for examining desire, intimacy, infidelity and the tensions inside modern partnerships.

Perel will work with a team of matchmakers and therapists to create pairings that challenge the usual assumptions surrounding compatibility. Rather than finding contestants who share the same interests, routines and preferences, the series will deliberately bring together people who may initially see each other as the last person they would ever choose.

The central question is whether attraction can develop when familiar dating checklists are removed. Apple describes the series as an exploration of whether an unexpected partner can become the person someone ultimately cannot imagine living without.

No premiere date, contestant list or filming locations have been announced.

The Last Person on Earth Challenges Compatibility

The Last Person on Earth enters a crowded dating television market with a premise that rejects one of the most common promises made by matchmaking services: that compatibility can be predicted through similarity.

Dating apps routinely organize potential relationships through age, location, interests, lifestyle preferences, political beliefs and other personal filters. The process can help users avoid obvious conflicts, but it can also create increasingly narrow definitions of who deserves consideration.

Perel has frequently argued that desire does not always emerge from familiarity. Attraction can depend on difference, curiosity and the discovery of qualities that were not included on a checklist.

The Apple TV series turns that idea into a structured experiment. Participants will meet someone who appears to contradict their expectations before traveling together to a remote setting where ordinary distractions and familiar support systems may be limited.

That environment creates immediate dramatic possibilities. A beautiful destination can make a first connection feel unusually intense, but isolation can also expose differences that would remain hidden during short dates in familiar surroundings.

The presence of therapists and matchmakers suggests that the series will examine those reactions rather than presenting every disagreement as entertainment. Perel can help participants distinguish between genuine incompatibility, defensive habits and discomfort created by encountering someone outside their usual pattern.

The experiment does not promise that every opposite pairing will succeed. Difference can produce curiosity, but it can also reveal conflicts involving values, communication, life goals or emotional availability.

The more revealing outcome may be whether participants leave with a broader understanding of attraction, even when the relationship itself does not continue.

Esther Perel Brings a Different Voice to Dating TV

Perel gives the series a more analytical foundation than the competition-driven structure used by many dating programs.

Her books Mating in Captivity and The State of Affairs examine the contradictions surrounding commitment, desire and personal freedom. She also hosts the podcasts Where Should We Begin? and How Work, presenting conversations that explore relationships without reducing complicated behavior to simple villains and heroes.

That background may help The Last Person on Earth avoid familiar reality television shortcuts. Dating shows often depend on rapid attraction, artificial scarcity and public rejection. Contestants compete for one person, choose partners through brief impressions or make long-term commitments before they have experienced ordinary life together.

The new series begins with a different source of tension. Participants are not being told that a seemingly perfect match has been selected. They are being asked to question why someone who appears wrong may deserve a closer look.

Perel describes the project as an invitation to move beyond what feels familiar or safe. Her involvement also raises expectations that the series will explore how participants construct their preferences.

A person may insist on dating only someone with a certain career, personality or social style without understanding where that requirement originated. Some preferences protect legitimate needs. Others may repeat an old relationship pattern or prevent vulnerability by eliminating anyone capable of creating uncertainty.

The matchmakers and therapists can examine those distinctions before, during and after the trip. Their role could become particularly valuable when participants confuse immediate comfort with long-term suitability or mistake tension for romantic chemistry.

Apple has not explained how long each pairing will remain together, whether several couples will appear in each episode or how the experiment will determine its final outcomes.

Remote Destinations Change the Dating Environment

Sending couples to romantic and remote destinations adds more than scenery.

Modern dating frequently develops through phones, messaging, social media profiles and quick meetings fitted around work schedules. Participants may arrive with established habits for checking other options, retreating into digital distractions or ending contact before uncertainty has time to become meaningful.

A remote journey removes part of that structure. Two people must spend sustained time together, make decisions and respond to unfamiliar situations without immediately returning to separate routines.

Travel can accelerate intimacy because it creates shared memories and reveals behavior under pressure. Delays, unfamiliar environments, fatigue and practical disagreements may show more than a polished restaurant conversation.

The destinations may also create a misleading sense of closeness. A relationship formed in an exceptional setting still needs to survive ordinary responsibilities, geography, work and family expectations after the trip ends.

The documentary format gives Apple an opportunity to follow that transition rather than ending with a dramatic choice at the destination. Whether the series continues documenting the couples after they return home has not been disclosed.

The title adds another layer to the concept. The “last person” can mean the least expected match, but it also reflects the anxiety surrounding modern dating. A growing number of people describe exhaustion with apps, repeated disappointment and the feeling that suitable partners are disappearing.

Apple links the experiment to rising social isolation and polarization. People increasingly sort themselves into cultural, political and lifestyle groups, while digital systems learn to reinforce existing preferences.

A relationship series built around difference can test whether those divisions remain as rigid when two people encounter each other as individuals rather than profiles representing opposing categories.

Unscripted Relationships

The eight-episode order gives the production enough space to develop several pairings without extending the experiment indefinitely. Its success will depend on whether the participants receive room to behave naturally or are pushed toward the exaggerated conflict expected from conventional dating television.

Perel provides the series with a promising tension: lasting relationships require genuine compatibility, yet attraction can disappear when every element feels predictable. The challenge is not proving that opposites always belong together. It is discovering which differences create possibility and which ones should remain deal-breakers.

The post The Last Person on Earth Reinvents Dating Shows appeared first on AppleMagazine.

Seller is part of the Silicon Valley company’s strategy to innovate on its original social network.

NASA and Blue Origin announced Friday they recently agreed to conduct second stage hot fire testing for the company’s New Glenn rocket on the B-2 test stand at the agency’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.

The annex to a reimbursable Space Act Agreement signed earlier this month highlights NASA’s commitment to working alongside commercial partners toward Artemis missions in 2027 and beyond.

“Stennis continues to be a hub for the commercial space industry,” said Sen. Roger Wicker. “Mississippi warmly welcomes Blue Origin’s return to the coast and to our legendary rocket testing facilities.”

“The success of Artemis II has roots at NASA Stennis, and I’m excited about the prospect of Blue Origin establishing a rigorous test program in Mississippi as part of future American crewed missions to the Moon and beyond. I hope its use of B-2 test stand becomes a long-term arrangement that broadens our state’s contribution to space exploration. I will certainly do what I can to make that a reality,” said Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith.

“Mississippi continues to play a vital role in America’s space program, and this agreement between NASA and Blue Origin is another major win for Stennis Space Center. The world-class capabilities at the B-2 test stand will help advance the next generation of rocket propulsion while supporting high-skilled jobs and strengthening our nation’s leadership in space exploration. I look forward to seeing the innovation that comes from this partnership,” said Rep. Mike Ezell.

Testing, targeted to begin this fall, directly supports NASA’s work to achieve the national goal of landing American astronauts on the surface of the Moon and building a Moon Base near the lunar South Pole. These efforts aim to strengthen American leadership in space, unlock scientific discovery, drive innovation with industry, and prepare for human missions to Mars.

 “Winning the new space race means moving faster and working alongside a strong commercial industry. Supporting Blue Origin at NASA’s Stennis Space Center puts world-class American infrastructure to work advancing the capabilities needed to return astronauts to the Moon, establish a sustained lunar presence, and prepare for Mars. Partnerships like this strengthen our industrial base and help ensure the United States remains the world’s leader in space,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman.

Building on the successful Artemis II flight from April, Artemis III is a highly choreographed, multi-launch campaign that will require four astronauts to test rendezvous and docking capabilities of NASA’s Orion spacecraft with commercial human landing systems from Blue Origin and SpaceX in low Earth orbit.

In addition, Blue Origin’s New Glenn will be used to launch missions that will land on the Moon.

“We are proud to partner with NASA and build on our shared commitment to returning America to the Moon and our broader mission to build a road to space for the benefit of Earth,” said Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp. “Stennis helped take Americans to the Moon, and through this partnership, it will help take us back.”

In May, NASA announced the first three Moon Base missions to begin building sustained operations, including an award to Blue Origin to launch a robotic mission this fall. The company’s Blue Moon Mark 1 Endurance lander will deliver NASA payloads to the lunar South Pole’s Shackleton Connecting Ridge, demonstrating capabilities that reduce risk for astronauts to land on the Moon during Artemis IV and V in 2028.

To support upcoming testing at Stennis, NASA will provide the engineers, equipment, and building services needed to design, build, and install parts that will prepare the B-2 for second stage testing of the rocket named in honor of the late NASA astronaut John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth. The rocket’s second stage is powered by two BE‑3 engines that use liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellants, with each engine generating 200,000 pounds of thrust in vacuum.

In addition to providing hands‑on technical support, NASA also will assist Blue Origin’s test operations by providing dedicated workspace and sharing agency expertise and lessons learned from propulsion testing conducted at the test stand.

Blue Origin will work toward second stage rocket testing on a stand with a history of testing rocket stages for Moon missions dating back to the 1960s. The agency constructed the stand to test the Saturn V rocket stages that carried humans to the Moon during the Apollo Program. More recently, NASA conducted a Green Run test series of the SLS core stage on the stand before the Artemis I test flight.

For more information about NASA’s Artemis program, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/artemis

-end-

Camille Gallo / Cheryl Warner
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
camille.m.gallo@nasa.gov / cheryl.m.warner@nasa.gov

Sallie Bilbo
Stennis Space Center, Bay St. Louis, Mississippi
228-342-6512
sallie.n.bilbo@nasa.gov

The post NASA to Support Blue Origin New Glenn Rocket Testing, Advance Artemis appeared first on NASA Science.

NASA and Blue Origin announced Friday they recently agreed to conduct second stage hot fire testing for the company’s New Glenn rocket on the B-2 test stand at the agency’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.

The annex to a reimbursable Space Act Agreement signed earlier this month highlights NASA’s commitment to working alongside commercial partners toward Artemis missions in 2027 and beyond.

“Stennis continues to be a hub for the commercial space industry,” said Sen. Roger Wicker. “Mississippi warmly welcomes Blue Origin’s return to the coast and to our legendary rocket testing facilities.”

“The success of Artemis II has roots at NASA Stennis, and I’m excited about the prospect of Blue Origin establishing a rigorous test program in Mississippi as part of future American crewed missions to the Moon and beyond. I hope its use of B-2 test stand becomes a long-term arrangement that broadens our state’s contribution to space exploration. I will certainly do what I can to make that a reality,” said Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith.

“Mississippi continues to play a vital role in America’s space program, and this agreement between NASA and Blue Origin is another major win for Stennis Space Center. The world-class capabilities at the B-2 test stand will help advance the next generation of rocket propulsion while supporting high-skilled jobs and strengthening our nation’s leadership in space exploration. I look forward to seeing the innovation that comes from this partnership,” said Rep. Mike Ezell.

Testing, targeted to begin this fall, directly supports NASA’s work to achieve the national goal of landing American astronauts on the surface of the Moon and building a Moon Base near the lunar South Pole. These efforts aim to strengthen American leadership in space, unlock scientific discovery, drive innovation with industry, and prepare for human missions to Mars.

 “Winning the new space race means moving faster and working alongside a strong commercial industry. Supporting Blue Origin at NASA’s Stennis Space Center puts world-class American infrastructure to work advancing the capabilities needed to return astronauts to the Moon, establish a sustained lunar presence, and prepare for Mars. Partnerships like this strengthen our industrial base and help ensure the United States remains the world’s leader in space,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman.

Building on the successful Artemis II flight from April, Artemis III is a highly choreographed, multi-launch campaign that will require four astronauts to test rendezvous and docking capabilities of NASA’s Orion spacecraft with commercial human landing systems from Blue Origin and SpaceX in low Earth orbit.

In addition, Blue Origin’s New Glenn will be used to launch missions that will land on the Moon.

“We are proud to partner with NASA and build on our shared commitment to returning America to the Moon and our broader mission to build a road to space for the benefit of Earth,” said Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp. “Stennis helped take Americans to the Moon, and through this partnership, it will help take us back.”

In May, NASA announced the first three Moon Base missions to begin building sustained operations, including an award to Blue Origin to launch a robotic mission this fall. The company’s Blue Moon Mark 1 Endurance lander will deliver NASA payloads to the lunar South Pole’s Shackleton Connecting Ridge, demonstrating capabilities that reduce risk for astronauts to land on the Moon during Artemis IV and V in 2028.

To support upcoming testing at Stennis, NASA will provide the engineers, equipment, and building services needed to design, build, and install parts that will prepare the B-2 for second stage testing of the rocket named in honor of the late NASA astronaut John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth. The rocket’s second stage is powered by two BE‑3 engines that use liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellants, with each engine generating 200,000 pounds of thrust in vacuum.

In addition to providing hands‑on technical support, NASA also will assist Blue Origin’s test operations by providing dedicated workspace and sharing agency expertise and lessons learned from propulsion testing conducted at the test stand.

Blue Origin will work toward second stage rocket testing on a stand with a history of testing rocket stages for Moon missions dating back to the 1960s. The agency constructed the stand to test the Saturn V rocket stages that carried humans to the Moon during the Apollo Program. More recently, NASA conducted a Green Run test series of the SLS core stage on the stand before the Artemis I test flight.

For more information about NASA’s Artemis program, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/artemis

-end-

Camille Gallo / Cheryl Warner
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
camille.m.gallo@nasa.gov / cheryl.m.warner@nasa.gov

Sallie Bilbo
Stennis Space Center, Bay St. Louis, Mississippi
228-342-6512
sallie.n.bilbo@nasa.gov

Advances in A.I. are making it possible to create all kinds of music from scratch, but they also raise questions about what is legal and who will actually listen.

ChatGPT Health is returning with substantially wider access, giving more iPhone users the option to connect information from Apple Health directly to the AI assistant.

The expansion follows a limited test introduced in January. OpenAI is now gradually making the dedicated Health experience available to eligible ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus and Pro users in the United States who are at least 18 years old.

Despite the close Apple connection, this is not a feature created by Apple or built directly into the Health app. OpenAI operates the service through ChatGPT, while Apple Health serves as one of the sources users can voluntarily connect.

Once permission is granted, ChatGPT can examine selected health and fitness information stored on iPhone, including activity, sleep, workouts and other measurements collected by compatible apps and devices. Users can then ask questions about changes over time without manually exporting records or uploading screenshots during every conversation.

ChatGPT Health Reaches More iPhone Users

ChatGPT Health originally appeared as a limited early-access experience for a small group of testers. The expanded rollout replaces that narrow availability with support for eligible adult users across the United States, although OpenAI says access may take several weeks to reach every account.

The feature works on the ChatGPT website and iOS app, but connecting Apple Health requires an iPhone. Users also need a recent version of the ChatGPT app before the Health option appears in the sidebar or More menu.

Apple Health is only one part of the system. ChatGPT can also connect to supported medical-record portals, One Medical and Function Health. Bringing those sources together allows the assistant to answer questions using a broader personal context than activity data alone.

A user could ask how sleep duration has changed across several weeks, whether workout frequency declined after a schedule change or how recent laboratory results compare with earlier tests. ChatGPT can also help organize questions before a medical appointment or summarize changes found across connected records.

Information from third-party fitness services can reach ChatGPT through Apple Health when those apps already share their data with the iPhone database. That may include measurements from platforms such as Garmin, Oura, Whoop, Strava and MyFitnessPal, depending on which categories each service makes available.

Not every proprietary score transfers. An app may calculate its own readiness, recovery or sleep score without writing that exact result into Apple Health. ChatGPT can only use the information made available through the connected source and approved by the user.

After synchronization, health information can inform responses throughout ChatGPT rather than remaining limited to conversations opened from the Health tab. The assistant normally asks for permission before using connected information, and users can also add “@Health” to a prompt when they specifically want a response based on their records.

Apple Health Data Gains a Conversational Layer

The appeal of the integration comes from turning a large collection of measurements into questions expressed in ordinary language.

Apple Health can already organize trends, highlights, medications, laboratory results and activity records. ChatGPT adds a conversational layer capable of comparing those categories or explaining them in a more personalized format.

Someone preparing for an annual physical could ask for a summary of meaningful changes since the previous appointment. A runner might request a comparison between training volume, sleep and resting heart rate. Another user could ask which information deserves discussion with a clinician after receiving new laboratory results.

That does not make ChatGPT a doctor. OpenAI says the feature is intended to support medical care rather than diagnose conditions or recommend treatment. Urgent symptoms and emergencies still require professional assistance.

The distinction is especially important because health data can appear more conclusive than it is. A change in heart rate, sleep or activity may have several explanations that cannot be determined from an iPhone record alone. Wearables can identify patterns, but they do not automatically reveal the medical cause behind them.

ChatGPT may help users notice relationships and prepare better questions. It should not be treated as the final authority on whether a symptom is harmless, whether medication should change or whether professional care is unnecessary.

The service is also read-only. ChatGPT can examine approved Apple Health information but cannot alter the original records stored on iPhone. It cannot add a diagnosis, change a medication list or write new measurements back into the Health app.

Users retain control over which Apple Health categories are shared. Someone may allow access to steps, workouts and sleep while withholding reproductive health, medications or other sensitive information.

That selective approach may be more appropriate than approving every category simply because the option is available. A useful response does not always require a complete health history.

Privacy Becomes the Central Decision

Connecting Apple Health to ChatGPT creates a different privacy relationship from using health features entirely within the Apple ecosystem.

Apple designs the Health app around on-device protections and user-controlled permissions. ChatGPT Health requires selected information to synchronize with OpenAI systems so the company can analyze it and generate personalized responses.

OpenAI says connected Apple Health data, medical records and conversations using that information are not used to train its foundation models or target advertising. The company also applies additional encryption and isolation protections to health information.

Users can disconnect Apple Health at any time. OpenAI says synchronized data from the disconnected source will be deleted from its systems within 30 days.

Previous conversations are handled separately. Information already included in ChatGPT conversation history remains until those chats are deleted, even after the Apple Health connection is removed.

Memory introduces another consideration. Conversations using Health can create memories when ChatGPT memory is enabled, although OpenAI says memories are not generated directly from synchronized health data. Temporary Chat or separate project memory can reduce how much personal context continues across future conversations.

The new Health experience should also not be confused with the existing ChatGPT integration inside Apple Intelligence. Siri and Writing Tools can use ChatGPT for certain requests without requiring the dedicated ChatGPT app or a connected account.

ChatGPT Health is a separate OpenAI service with its own account, permissions, privacy controls and health-data connections. Using ChatGPT through Siri does not automatically give OpenAI access to Apple Health.

That separation gives users a meaningful choice. They can continue keeping health information inside Apple apps, share only selected categories with ChatGPT or connect medical records for a more comprehensive view.

The expanded rollout makes one of the most personal databases on iPhone available to conversational AI. Its usefulness will depend not only on the quality of the answers, but also on whether users understand exactly which information they are sharing and where it goes after leaving the device.

The post ChatGPT Health Expands Apple Health Access appeared first on AppleMagazine.

After Trump publicly backed pillow salesman turned election denier Mike Lindell for governor of Minnesota, the local GOP pushed back strongly.