European scientists are taking advantage of this week’s solar eclipse to test a potentially groundbreaking instrument that could transform the way astronomers study the Sun.
For weeks, a team from the Astrophysical Observatory of Turin has been stationed at Spain’s Javalambre Astrophysical Observatory, preparing to deploy a novel spectrometer ahead of the August 12 eclipse.
On that date, researchers will activate the Circular Slit Spectrometer (CISS), which the Turin-based team says will provide a unique new view of our life-giving star. Specifically, the device will focus on the corona, the outermost portions of the Solar atmosphere, and the hottest part of the Sun.
The 2026 Solar Eclipse: A Trio of Occurrences
This month, skywatchers will be treated to a trio of celestial events: a solar eclipse and the peak of the Perseids meteor shower on August 12, followed by a lunar eclipse between August 27 and 28. The total solar eclipse will be best viewed from parts of Spain, Portugal, Russia, Iceland, and Greenland, while observers across much of Europe, Africa, and North America will experience only a partial eclipse.
To take advantage of the event, the research team traveled from its home base in Padua, northern Italy, to Spain, where years of development work will culminate in the first field test of CISS. The scientists believe the new instrument could significantly improve observations of the Sun’s corona.
Opportunities Arise During the European Eclipse
Spectrometers are among astronomers’ most valuable tools, allowing researchers to analyze the composition of stars and even detect the atmospheres of distant exoplanets by examining subtle changes in starlight.
Closer to home, the Italian team believes CISS can separate the wavelengths of sunlight far more rapidly than existing instruments. That capability could prove especially valuable because the corona drives powerful space weather events capable of disrupting communications, power grids, and GPS systems on Earth and in orbit.
The researchers see the eclipse as the ideal opportunity to test their instrument, since the Moon’s passage in front of the Sun dramatically increases the contrast of the corona against the sky. For the team, the observation marks the culmination of more than two and a half years spent rethinking some of the fundamental design principles behind conventional spectrometers.
CISS: A Spectrometer Unlike Any Other
Unlike traditional spectrometers, which typically rely on a narrow rectangular slit, CISS uses a circular slit. This allows it to “capture the spectrum of the entire corona at a certain distance from the centre of the Sun in a single photograph,” according to principal investigator Federico Landini of the Astrophysical Observatory of Turin.
By redesigning the instrument’s aperture, the researchers say they have reduced the time needed to scan the corona from hours to just minutes. If successful, the eclipse demonstration could pave the way for incorporating the technology into future space missions designed to observe the Sun from closer vantage points.
For now, the team is focused on ensuring the best possible observing conditions. Researchers continue to monitor the weather, with current forecasts appearing favorable for eclipse viewing. To minimize the risk of equipment problems, the team transported CISS from Italy to Spain by van rather than by air, avoiding the need to disassemble the instrument and reducing the possibility of flight delays or cancellations.
Later this week, they will learn whether years of work have produced a breakthrough in solar observation—or simply the next step in refining a promising new technology.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org.
Lasers are no longer required to produce quantum entanglement, physicists say, after achieving the state using sunlight. In a laboratory experiment, an international team of researchers demonstrated that natural sunlight can produce quantum-entangled photon pairs.
The researchers recently published their quantum entanglement study in Optica, showing that lasers aren’t the only game in town. The work could herald a new energy-efficient approach to sustainable quantum technologies, both on Earth and in space.
Quantum Entanglement
Quantum technologies such as computing, communications, and sensing rely on the strange principles of quantum mechanics, which often defy explanations rooted in classical physics. Typically, quantum technologies use lasers to convert photons inside a nonlinear crystal into entangled pairs through a process called spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC).
Prior to this work, using sunlight to produce quantum entanglement in photons was largely considered impractical. Researchers had assumed that SPDC depended heavily on phase-stable electromagnetic fields, requiring the high coherence of laser beams. Scientists also believed that the intense power of lasers was crucial to the nonlinear processes that produce entanglement. By contrast, sunlight’s relative weakness and incoherence left it largely overlooked as a viable source for generating entangled photons.
Reconsidering Coherence
Earlier work may have dismissed sunlight too readily because scientists had not fully considered the different dimensions of coherence. Across different parameters, sunlight can exhibit varying degrees of coherence. This means that while a beam of sunlight may be coherent in a particular property, such as polarization, it can still generate quantum entanglement along that parameter.
“As long as the pump beam is perfectly polarized, its spatial or temporal incoherence should not preclude the generation of polarization entanglement,” said lead author Cheng Li in a statement.
“The trick to harnessing sunlight is to keep different degrees of freedom of light from influencing each other during the process,” Li added. “This means that sunlight is perfectly capable of generating entangled photons, as long as one can concentrate enough sunlight into a nonlinear crystal to induce SPDC.”
Directing Sunlight
In a natural environment, sunlight spreads across a broad area rather than remaining tightly focused like a laser beam. Efficiently directing it through a nonlinear optical crystal, only a few millimeters wide, therefore presents a significant challenge.
To overcome this obstacle, the researchers constructed a sunlight concentration system that collects light across a 1.4-square-meter surface and focuses it down to approximately the width of a human hair. The specialized solar concentrator is conical rather than flat and is constructed from glass. As sunlight reflects repeatedly across the interior surface on its way toward the cone’s tip, it becomes progressively concentrated and intensified before traveling through a single optical fiber to drive the SPDC process that generates quantum entanglement.
Quantum Entanglement Results
In laboratory tests, the researchers found that their sunlight-driven SPDC system produced performance comparable to that of a laser, achieving 94% fidelity. The efficiency of the entanglement process was also similar to that achieved with laser-based systems. Together, these findings challenge previous assumptions that SPDC requires highly coherent laser light to operate effectively.
The approach also eliminates the need to first convert electrical energy into optical energy, potentially reducing system complexity, heat generation, and points of failure.
“Sunlight is an abundant and reliable resource in many environments, especially in space. Being able to generate quantum-entangled photons directly from sunlight could enable simpler and more resilient quantum systems for satellites and future deep-space missions,” said Hanieh Fattahi, the study’s co-author, in a statement.
“We believe this work can inspire much new research in nonlinear and quantum optics,” Fattahi said, adding that this research “may in turn make sunlight-driven quantum technology more practical.”
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org.
An international research team has uncovered how LUCA, the last common ancestor of all life on Earth, split into the first two branches of organisms—bacteria and archaea—allowinglife to thrive innew conditions and spread to other biomes.
Scientists from the Institute of Molecular Evolution at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) led the research, revealing their findings in a recent paper published in Science Advances, investigating these early cells’ metabolisms.
The team discovered that the chemical reactions and energy sources behind these two types of cells told unique stories of separate evolutions, in new work that sheds light on the primordial processes that gave rise to some of Earth’s first free-living cells.
Life on Earth Begins
Roughly four billion years ago, life on Earth emerged as the first cells formed, most likely at hydrothermal vents, before evolving to explore new biomes.
“We would see two very different kinds of cells emerging, pioneer bacteria and pioneer archaea, making their first attempts at life outside the confines of a hydrothermal vent,” said lead author Natalia Mrnjavac, a biologist at the University of Düsseldorf.
The new study investigated protein structures, chemical reactions, and genomes involved in the evolution of these early free-living cells.
“These comparisons are giving us unprecedented insights into the phase of evolution when metabolism catalysed by enzymes was arising from spontaneous reactions catalysed by metals in the Earth’s crust,” said senior author William Martin, a Düsseldorf biologist.
Metabolism and Evolution
Among the new work’s major findings is a consideration of the entire set of 420 chemical reactions involved in metabolism that produce amino acids, RNA bases, and vitamins from the raw materials of hydrogen, ammonia, and carbon dioxide.
These reactions are preserved for modern researchers inside the genetic code, allowing the team to make a surprising discovery: about half of LUCA’s reactions were catalyzed by environmental metals instead of enzymes produced by the organism itself.
“Metals that naturally occur in hydrothermal vents can replace a surprisingly large number of enzymes in metabolism,” said co-author Harun Tüysüz, an inorganic chemist from the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung and the IMDEA Materials Institute in Madrid.
In this study, the team reconstructed catalysis evolution from metal-only to a metal-enzyme hybrid present in LUCA, and finally to the divergence of the bacterial and archaeal lineages. This evolution helped life move on from the hydrothermal vents inhabited by the first cells by replacing the inorganic catalysts provided by that environment with new enzymes.
“We can see cases where the ancestors of bacteria and archaea independently evolved structurally distinct enzymes to catalyse the same essential metabolic reaction,” Mrnjavac explained, adding that “such parallel inventions could have paved the way to the independent emergence of free-living bacteria and archaea.”
The Energy for Life on Earth
A primary question involves what supplied the energy driving metabolic reactions in early life on Earth. A compound named ATP is the primary metabolic driver in most organisms today, but it comes from enzymes and is not present in hydrothermal vents. The researchers identified a new energy source in palladium, a natural catalyst used by chemists and also plentiful in hydrothermal vents.
“When we react phosphite, a form of phosphorus that naturally occurs in hydrothermal vents, with organic compounds, we get metabolic phosphorylation reactions overnight in water. Phosphite and palladium replace ATP and enzymes; it’s amazing, and it makes early evolution a lot easier to grasp,” Schlikker said.
Understanding the interconnection between so many reactions presents a significant mathematical challenge. For this reason, the team included not just biologists, but network scientists tasked with ordering the reactions by their complexity, which the researchers hoped would indicate the sequence in which they evolved. Using a machine learning algorithm, the team discovered that a clear order did appear to exist.
“The new data leave only one conclusion,” Martin concluded. “The bacteria and archaeal lineages made the transition to the free-living state independently. Only free-living cells are alive.”
“Let’s call it by name,” Martin added. “We are looking at one origin of the genetic code, but two origins of life.”
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org.
Antarctica’s Blood Falls, a striking and eerie-looking feature in the McMurdo Dry Valleys where crimson-red fluid oozes from the tongue of the Taylor Glacier, may point to a hidden connection between the sea and the coldest desert on Earth.
According to new research, these unusual features on the southernmost continent may contain microbial evidence of water flowing from ancient seas into the Antarctic desert. Researchers from the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, revealed their Antarctic discovery in a recent paper published in Nature Geoscience, identifying eukaryotic organisms swimming in the crimson water.
The distinctive color of the Blood Falls comes from the high iron content of the salty water, which leaves a crimson stain on the white snow as it flows out from under the glacier.
An Antarctic Discovery
Close to the Taylor Glacier terminus, the JCVI researchers found a eukaryote community that they suggest arrived in the valley with ancient seawater.
“This is an environment that looks almost completely cut off from the ocean today,” said lead author Angela Zoumplis, of Yale and JCVI. “But when we looked at the molecular signatures of the organisms living in the red mud and sediment around Blood Falls, we saw a surprisingly strong marine signal. That tells us this place may be preserving traces of an older connection between the Dry Valleys and the sea.”
Antarctica’s Blood Falls (Image Credit: National Science Foundation/Peter Rejcek)
Even though glaciers are made of water ice, Antarctica’s McMurdo Dry Valleys are not just some of the planet’s coldest deserts, but also the driest. In this location, extremophiles survive on the edges of some of our planet’s most challenging living conditions.
Extremophile Laboratory
Previous work discovered bacteria persisting in the Blood Falls brine, but the new research is the first to discover a significantly larger life form: eukaryotes such as diatoms. The term eukaryote refers to single-celled organisms with a nucleus. Within this group, diatoms are noted for their silica shells and their highly specific preference for certain habitats.
As they analyzed 167 samples collected in the region, the team identified diatoms associated with marine environments only in the Blood Falls discharge, but not in the surrounding lakes and streams, or even in air samples.
“We were not just asking whether marine organisms were present,” Zoumplis said. “We wanted to know whether they were part of a distinct community, whether they looked different from nearby freshwater communities, and whether there was evidence that they were active. The answer to all three was yes.”
Antarctic Analysis
Laboratory techniques applied to the samples included examining their RNA with metatranscriptomics and molecular sequencing. In the Blood Falls samples, the team’s analysis revealed between 60% and 80% of the diatoms were marine-associated. The samples from other locations were primarily composed of land and freshwater diatoms.
Notably, these weren’t just dying remnants of diatom communities that had been swept into the Antarctic—they displayed gene activity related to survival under these extreme conditions.
“That activity is what makes the finding especially exciting,” Zoumplis said. “We are not simply seeing genetic leftovers. We are seeing evidence of organisms responding to a harsh, changing environment — freezing, thawing, salt stress, iron exposure, and long periods of inactivity.”
While the discovery does not entirely rule out that the diatoms arrived via wind, this is unlikely based on the prevalence of marine species specifically in the Blood Falls samples. The researchers note the area’s unusual chemistry, providing a brine rich in iron, salt, and silica, in addition to observed survival tactics in the diatom, such as the formation of resting cells.
This community likely isn’t a perfect preservation of an ancient marine ecosystem within a seemingly “lost” portion of the ocean, the researchers say, but the result of continued deposits and selection over time. Rather than providing a perfect record of ancient microbial communities, studying these eukaryotes can provide researchers with information on past climate change and how life survives under the most hostile of conditions.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org.
Botanists are still proving Charles Darwin right with their recent identification of a new carnivorous plant growing in China’s mountainous forests.
Saxifraga candelabrum is a small, yellow flower with a taste for flesh that may one day help protect endangered crops, and researchers have revealed their detailed analysis of the carnivorous plant, conducted both in the field and the laboratory, in a recent paper published in Nature Communications.
The carnivorous plant attracts, traps, and finally digests prey, typically consisting of fruit flies and other small insects, breaking them down with a caustic enzyme that it produces.
Charles Darwin and Carnivorous Plants
Although it was philosopher Herbert Spencer who actually coined the phrase “survival of the fittest,” it was Charles Darwin who developed the concept behind it in his work on natural selection. With an eye towards survival in a harsh natural world, Darwin suggested in 1875 that some plants in the genus Saxifraga may be more than just beautiful flowers—they may also be very patient hunters.
Darwin’s suspicion centered on Saxifraga species other than S. candelabrum, the plant examined in the new study. However, the basis for his hypothesis holds true: the father of evolutionary biology focused on the microscopic hairs covering the plants’ surfaces, a feature shared by both the species he studied and the newly confirmed carnivorous plant.
Darwin suggested these hairs acted as a trap, capturing insects drawn to the flowers and holding them in place as the plants slowly absorbed nutrients from them. He was right.
A New Take on Carnivorous Plants
Most carnivorous plants rely on highly specialized structures to capture prey. The iconic clamping leaves of Dionaea muscipula, better known as the Venus flytrap, are one example. Another is Low’s pitcher plant, which lures insects into its pitcher-shaped trap before digesting them.
S. candelabrum, however, employs a far subtler strategy. Rather than relying on elaborate trapping structures, it uses innocuous-looking hairs covering its flowers and stems. Once insects land on them, they discover the bristles are exceptionally sticky, trapping them until the plant can digest them.
“The discovery of Saxifraga candelabrum reminds us that many inconspicuous carnivorous plants, or plants with partial carnivorous traits, may still exist in nature,” said lead author Hang Sun, a botanist at the Kunming Institute of Botany at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Investigating a Hidden Hunter
The team’s research involved a great deal of fieldwork, observing S. candelabrum consuming insects in the mountain forests of China. However, it was their detailed genetic analysis in the lab that later showed how similar the plant was to other carnivorous species, despite its unusually benign appearance.
As part of their laboratory experiments, the researchers fed the plants fruit flies while closely monitoring their behavior. These observations allowed the team to identify digestive enzymes secreted by the plant to break down nitrogen-rich nutrients from its prey.
Identifying a new carnivorous plant species is an uncommon achievement for botanists, with the last such discovery occurring only five years ago. Even more remarkable is that the finding so closely aligns with Charles Darwin’s century-old prediction.
The researchers say the discovery is more than a botanical curiosity. A better understanding of how carnivorous plants digest insects could eventually aid the development of natural pesticides and other agricultural tools, potentially transforming these tiny predators into allies for protecting the world’s food supply.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org.
The speed of laserlight is due for a major upgrade after an international collaboration of scientists has developed a breakthrough nanomaterial. The new metasurface can steer and shape light beams at unprecedented speeds of just 74 quadrillionths of a second.
Scientists at UC Berkeley and Tel Aviv University revealed their new optical surface, developed in a Caltech lab, in a recent paper published in Nature Nanotechnology.
According to the team behind the breakthrough, their work will have ramifications for communications, sensing, imaging, and even quantum technologies, providing a new benchmark for “high-speed” light manipulation.
Light Control
Since the fiber-optic advancements of the 1980s, lasers and light pulses have underpinned some of our most crucial cutting-edge technologies. Advanced computers, communications systems, sensors, and even the elusive quantum systems all rely on controlling light.
While the speed of light is so incredibly fast that physicists consider it a constraint on the maximum speed that matter can travel through the vacuum of space, the speed at which our technology reacts to it is far slower.
The scientists’ breakthrough metasurface contains silicon structures even smaller than the wavelength of light, resulting in an ultra-thin surface. Silicon’s optical properties change upon bombardment with laser pulses, a property that the team strongly enhanced with their nanostructure design. In their design, the properties of the material are modified via light pulses, which alter how the material influences a second beam of light impacting its surface. Notably, their metasurface allows for control of a beam of light without any moving parts, such as mirrors or lenses.
Real World Results
The team conducted laboratory tests in which they manipulated light beams by up to 13 degrees and reshaped them into different patterns.
“The key idea was to create a metasurface whose optical response is not fixed once it is fabricated,” said lead author Dr. Claudio Hail. “By changing the illumination pattern, we can reconfigure how the device steers and shapes light, and do so on an ultrafast timescale.”
“For me, the most exciting aspect is seeing an idea that had been with us for years become an experimental reality,” said co-author Dr. Lior Michaeli. “The ultrafast effect we wanted to use is naturally very weak. We had to design the metasurface so that it would amplify the effect enough not only to measure it, but to use it to steer and shape light.”
While the metasurface produced record-breaking speeds under laboratory observations, exactly how fast it can operate remains uncertain. The researchers note that the switching time and the duration of the laser pulse were extremely close, which indicates that quicker pulses could push the optical surface’s speed even higher.
The Future of Light Technologies
One of the major potential advances that could come from this new metasurface includes systems that carry information primarily with light, end-to-end. Current communications systems use light to transmit messages, but those messages are converted into electrical signals for processing. By increasing the speed at which light can be manipulated, this would reduce the necessity to convert light signals into electrical ones, removing unnecessary actions in computing.
“This work points to a broader opportunity: using engineered structures to strengthen interactions between light and matter and turn them into tools for control, sensing, and information processing,” Dr. Michaeli said. “This is closely connected to research directions we are now pursuing at Tel Aviv University.”
Despite its promise, the work is still in the fundamental phase. Although not yet ready for practical use, the metasurface offers promise in future ultra-fast computing applications, where it may soon help to cut out the middleman of electronic conversion.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org.
When a team of physicists in Paris fabricated the world’s first temporal photonic crystal, they added a new dimension to humanity’s quest to control light: time. From lighting our homes to advanced fiber optics and lasers, humans have long worked to control light, and now researchers say that can be achieved in a fourth dimension.
Yannis Laplace led the team at the Laboratory of Irradiated Solids (LSI) in demonstrating the temporal photonic crystal, with the help of other European institutions, which was revealed in a recent paper published in Nature.
As light hits the crystal, a terahertz electromagnetic wave rapidly modulates its optical properties, producing a device that controls light over time without expending energy.
Crystal Power
Controlling the properties of light for applications in telecommunications, sensors, and light sources is an active research field and is often reliant on crystals. In technical terms, a crystal is simply a regularly and periodically organized system. While we primarily think of translucent, shining crystals, they can be constructed of other forms of matter, such as gas or liquids, so long as their atoms arrange into regular, well-defined intervals.
How atoms arrange to form crystals grants their electrons and the photons they emit unique properties, including color and energy. Targeting photons specifically became an interest of scientists in the 1980s, with the development of photonic crystals, whose alternating materials each had unique effects on photons. These photonics gave rise to modern lasers, optical fibers, and photodetectors, technologies that have advanced considerably in recent decades.
Into the Time Dimension
In the last decade, researchers have experimented with a new kind of crystal: the time crystal. They are comprised of a unique form of matter in which particles repeat a continuous sequence—not just in the three physical dimensions, but also in time, without expending any energy.
The LSI team sought to combine photonic crystals with time crystals to develop a temporal photonic crystal that would control a light-matter interaction by alternating over time. Their work represents the first time such an idea has moved from the theoretical realm into the physical.
The device the researchers constructed operates in the high terahertz range, pushing light to oscillate 1000 billion times a second. It consists of micrometer-scale gold structures, shaped like battlements, leaving open cavities separated from an indium-antimony semiconductor by an insulating layer. The cavities between the gold structures trap light photons.
Testing a Temporal Photonic Crystal
To demonstrate their device in the real world, the LSI team bombarded it with terahertz laser pulses and recorded the material’s optical properties, modulating light over time. The effect was incredibly powerful, creating a strong modulation that alternated one billionth of a billionth of a second.
At the semiconductor layer, the researchers observed electrons forming from the light waves in what are called “surface plasmons,” oscillating with their effective mass. The greater their speed, the heavier these electrons become, producing the device’s optical modulations.
Beyond this observed phenomenon, the researchers suspect other interesting conditions may be occurring within the crystal. Some indirect evidence suggests that photons trapped inside the structure are amplified, although presently no direct observations have confirmed this. The team is continuing with experiments in hopes of eventually capturing this photon trapping phenomenon.
Laplace and his colleagues see these unique time crystals as eventually being a pathway toward the creation of terahertz-scale light sources and detectors, which would fit between those of electronics and visible light frequencies.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org.
As new observations reveal the outer edges of IC 1101 for the first time, scientists have confirmed it is the largest known galaxy. The galaxy’s statistics are staggering, containing an estimated 3.4 trillion solar masses of stars and spanning roughly 1.7 million light-years, eclipsing every other known galaxy.
IC 1101 belongs to a class known as brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs), which form as massive galaxies spend billions of years absorbing smaller neighboring galaxies.
The new images are the deepest ever taken of the galaxy, and were revealed in a recent paper accepted for publication in a future issue of Astronomy and Astrophysics, but available now in preprint form on the arXiv server.
Blending into the Cosmic Background
Despite their enormous sizes, BCGs are notoriously difficult for astronomers to study. Because they are built through the gradual merger of many smaller galaxies, their outer regions are extremely faint, containing diffuse stellar halos and tidal tails left behind by ancient collisions. These wispy edges often blend into the free-floating gas and stars that fill galaxy clusters, making it difficult to determine precisely where the galaxy ends and the surrounding cluster begins.
Carlos Marrero-de la Rosa of the Astrophysical Institute of the Canary Islands led the new study, focusing on IC 1101, the dominant galaxy at the center of the Abell 2029 galaxy cluster.
The research relied on ultra-deep images captured with the Wide Field Camera at the Isaac Newton Telescope, allowing astronomers to resolve the galaxy’s diffuse outer boundary in unprecedented detail.
Applying a star subtraction algorithm to the composite image of the IC 1101 galaxy provides a new level of detail and contrast. Credit: Carlos Marrero-de la Rosa et al. (2026)
Battling Light Pollution
With the number of satellites orbiting Earth increasing dramatically in recent years, astronomers have raised concerns about artificial light pollution. In this case, however, the researchers faced interference from a far more distant source: foreground stars within our own galaxy.
These stars, located between Earth and IC 1101, scatter light across telescope images, washing out the extremely faint structures astronomers are attempting to detect. Since the galaxy’s outermost regions are already difficult to distinguish, any additional scattered light significantly reduces image contrast.
To overcome this problem, the researchers constructed a detailed model of how the telescope spreads light using dozens of calibration stars. The model allowed the team to accurately subtract scattered light from more than 250 foreground stars, bringing IC 1101’s faintest structures into much sharper contrast and enabling a more precise measurement of its true extent.
The Largest Known Galaxy
IC 1101’s immense scale becomes even more striking when compared with our own Milky Way. The astronomers measured IC 1101 at roughly 520 kiloparsecs across—about 17 times wider than the Milky Way’s approximately 30-kiloparsec diameter. Even after accounting for all forms of mass, including elusive dark matter, scientists estimate that the Milky Way contains only about 1 to 1.5 trillion solar masses of material, compared with the 3.4 trillion solar masses contained in the stars of IC 1101 alone.
Researchers also found evidence that the giant galaxy continues to grow. They identified eight structures beyond its main edge, two of which align with previously observed X-ray disturbances that suggest ongoing accretion. According to the team, IC 1101 likely collided with another galaxy group between two and three billion years ago, producing a merger that continues to shape the galaxy today.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org.
A teleoperated centaur robot dubbed “Threehalves” could represent the future of manual work in some of our planet’s most dangerous environments, according to Satyress Robotics, the California startup behind the project. In disasters such as mudslides, wildfires, and rubble searches, the company says its robot can keep workers safe from on-site hazards.
The other side of the story is the robot’s creepy, almost demonic appearance, as conveyed on the provocative Satyress Robotics website, the imagery for which is so unusual that it almost gives the impression of being a parody—particularly in an age of breathless reporting on corporate claims, and sudden appearances of “viral” news stories.
Therefore, The Debrief decided to take a deeper look at this mechanical oddity that more closely resembles something out of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey than a project in development in a California robotics lab.
An Unsettling Robot
Threehalves isn’t exactly news; all of the available information on the robot was posted on the company website over a year ago, around the time of their only post on X. Yet it’s recently been discovered by internet outlets noting the creepy design of this robot that the company claims is here to help.
“It’s obviously quite over the top, but ultimately, this is at the extreme end of humanoid robotics in size and capability,” a company representative told The Debrief.
“People may be familiar with humanoid robots from TV/movies or product videos, but likely don’t understand just how powerful and heavy they are (especially ours, which is coming in at just under 7ft tall and 240 lbs currently),” the rep added. “Our thought is someone who didn’t know what it is should definitely stay away from it, and those that do know or are operating the machine should be reminded it’s quite dangerous.”
“If you look at something like a lathe or mill, they generally look intimidating, for good reason, even though they could be dressed up to look friendly and soft,” the rep concluded. “We’ll point out, though, that the ‘evil’ look is mostly from it being pitch black; with different colors or a wrap on it, it does not put off that vibe.”
Robot “Superpowers”
Part of Threehalves’ sales pitch is that it won’t replace jobs, but instead will merely transfer them to robotic operators using a joystick to guide Threehalves through manual work in dangerous environments. The website claims that this amounts to granting workers “superpowers,” allowing them to focus on honing their craft in new extreme situations. However, while the operator won’t have to directly get their hands dirty, Satyress Robotics told The Debrief that Threehalves is designed for line-of-sight, close-proximity operation.
“We don’t have any plans to develop much autonomy above what’s needed to keep the robot from damaging itself,” the Satyress Robotics representative said. “Our goal is to have experienced trade experts in control of the bots at all times. Forestry, for instance, is the deadliest job in the US – our goal is to save lives first and foremost, and we believe that is also enough economically to justify the cost of the bot without any autonomous productivity gain.”
Two of the robots can fit in a standard truck bed, allowing them to be easily transported to remote locations. Lacking hands, the robot can be fitted with a variety of unique attachments to hold various tools from chainsaws to drills. Of note, the robot is shown holding a gas-powered chainsaw. Exactly how it would manage to get the chainsaw started without an obvious way to pull the ripcord is unclear.
Safety First
With fears of a demonic Terminator immediately conjured up by Threehalves’ appearance, the company informs us that although “this robot is more dangerous than it looks,” the same is true of any humanoid robot, and this one comes equipped with a variety of safety features.
Ironically, one of these is the robot’s menacing horns, which significantly slow the robot down in moving through standard-size door frames, and can even be replaced with larger horns that make traversing such portals impossible.
“It’s another way to make it clear this isn’t a toy, [a] security guard, etc,” the Satyress Robotics representative said. “It’s built for one reason, for a teleoperator to do dangerous work or heavy lifting from a safe, in line of sight distance.”
“We are not looking at any use cases in commercial buildings, and certainly not residential,” they added.
The recommended methods to halt the robot may be as disconcerting as its appearance. Credit: Satyress Robotics
A Violent Stop
Additionally, air reservoirs in the chest cavity and on the robot’s back are designed to activate pin locks on all its joints, rendering the robot immobile if air pressure is lost. Imagery on the website suggests this can seemingly be accomplished by stabbing Threehalves with a knife or shooting it with a gun. Fortunately, a more pacifist option to halt the robot also exists: simply by hitting an e-stop button located on its stomach.
When pressed on why the company would design their robot to be susceptible to gunfire specifically, the representative didn’t seem to find this the least bit unusual.
“Nothing software wise/control wise, whether autonomous or teleoperated, can be guaranteed to never have any kind of control issue,” the Satyress Robotics representative said. “This gives a means to lock the brakes remotely without necessarily damaging the robot beyond repair.”
Robot Reality or Hoax?
With the unsettling design and suggestion that the robot may eventually have to be shot to stop it from injuring a human, one of this reporter’s main questions became: “Is this a joke?” The outlandish nature of the project reminds one of prankster Joey Skaggs’ tricks on the media, such as the time he convinced WNBC-TV in New York and United Press International that he had recently developed a cure-all derived from roach hormones, which he was injecting into his followers.
However, the Satyress Robotics representative confirmed that the company’s new quadrupedal working robot is no joke.
“It’s not a prank. Also, we’re building it with the goal of keeping workers safe, so we just want to make it clear we’re thinking of every edge case and looking for ways to solve them outside of software,” the representative explained. “We are quite a ways away from showing the robot in any kind of elegant motion, thus the static renders/photos.”
Given that the company hasn’t posted on social media in over a year and has no LinkedIn presence, it was unclear who was behind the operation and if it was still underway. According to the company, they will shortly be making a video to introduce themselves.
While one picture on the website appears to show a live test with a joystick, there are no videos of Threehalves in motion on the website, and our email conversation confirmed it is not yet a functional robot.
For now, the company tells The Debrief that they are currently working on component-level testing and any commercial version of the Threehalves is more than two years away.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.
Chinese researchers are using laser technology to vastly extend the flight time of drones, marking a significant shift in UAV capabilities.
The achievement was reported by researchers from China’s Civil Aviation University, who reported their findings in laser-based drone charging technology in a recent article published in Matter & Light.
The new drone concept utilizes a lightweight receiver, repurposing solar cell technology to absorb laser light and convert it into electricity to power a device.
Endless Drones
“Imagine a future where drones inspecting forests, monitoring disasters, or delivering packages no longer need to land frequently to replace batteries,” said senior author Jianhua Han of Civil Aviation University of China. “As drones take on longer missions, battery life has become one of the biggest barriers.”
At the core of the breakthrough is perovskite, a class of synthetic compounds with a crystalline structure highly conducive to solar power applications. The team developed a perovskite laser cell-thermoelectric (PLC-TE) tandem device that optimizes a solar cell to accept laser energy.
In laboratory tests, the perovskite laser receiver effectively powered the propeller on a stationary drone model (Image Credit: Y. Han and X. Han et al., Matter & Light)
The cell’s perovskite converts laser energy into electricity, which can be a messy process, as some of the power is lost as heat. The thermoelectric layer addresses this problem by capturing heat and converting it into electricity via the temperature differential between its warmer, laser-facing side and its cooler side. However, that contrast requirement can be an issue when the laser uniformly heats the entire drone, reducing the efficiency of that heat-to-energy conversion.
Managing Overheating
“When we tested the device under a high-power laser, the thermal camera showed temperatures of 80 to 90 degrees Celsius,” Han said. “That was much higher than we expected and made us realize that heat buildup was a far more serious problem than we had imagined.”
To mitigate overheating concerns, the receiver was mounted on the drone’s wings, kept separate from other components, and paired with heat-blocking technology to enable laser-to-electric energy conversion without overheating sensitive electronics.
This heat-blocking technology included nanocrystals embedded in the PLC-TE tandem device, which acted as a thermal barrier due to their poor thermal conductivity. With the nanocrystals in place, the researchers tested the conversion device on its own and observed a significant slowdown in heat flow during prolonged laser exposure, which would cool the drone overall.
This PLC-TE device was bombarded with a green laser in a laboratory experiment and converted 38.49% of the beam’s energy into electricity, a high percentage compared to other wireless charging systems in similar scenarios.
Drone Tests
Next, the team integrated the energy conversion system onto a stationary lab drone and also added airflow channels to the wings. In subsequent laboratory tests, laser bombardment supplied sufficient energy to power the drone’s propeller, while the airflow channels effectively cooled the thermoelectric layer’s cold side, maximizing heat-to-electricity conversion.
“Previous studies largely focused on the materials or the device itself,” Han explained. “We wanted to think beyond the laboratory, to how the system could actually be integrated into an aircraft, cooled during operation, and made compatible with flight. It isn’t just a materials science problem; it’s an engineering one.”
Work continues on this wireless drone charging system, with outdoor flight tests on a lightweight frame scheduled. These will be paying particular attention to the system’s reliability under real-world outdoor conditions. However, the team notes that energy conversion efficiency will not be their sole research area, as the accuracy of laser tracking will be essential to the system’s safe operation.
“Our work demonstrates the possibility of ‘refueling aircraft with light,’” Han concluded. “Going from 1 to 100 will require solving many engineering challenges, but we hope this provides a starting point for future development.”
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org.
The cosmic violence of a black hole tearing apart a star produced a brilliant burst of radio light, which has been observed by astronomers thanks to a new international collaboration.
The U.S. National Science Foundation’s Very Large Array (NSF VLA) captured an off-axis afterglow that the researchers believe was left behind by a powerful jet produced by the star’s destruction. The black hole event was dubbed AT2019ijn by the Chinese research team that made the observation using U.S. equipment, and was described in a recent paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Intriguingly, this explosive cosmic event provides astronomers with important new clues in the search for some of the universe’s rarest types of black holes.
A Bright Blue Flash
Various optical surveys of the cosmos detected the bright blue flash of AT2019ijn. For a few days, it continued to grow in brilliance before oddly fading at a rate far slower than is typical of similar transients.
Yet the optical spectrum did not tell the full story. As researchers combed through radio observations, they unexpectedly discovered that the radio emission did not peak within mere days but continued growing for two years before decaying over the next four. Also notable was the intensity of the emission, which was far more luminous than is typically seen during these phases of a stellar explosion.
Its 3-gigahertz luminosity was more than 100 times greater than signals typically observed from supernovae or fast blue optical transients.
Understanding the event required researchers to combine optical data with radio observations from the NSF VLA, India’s Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope, and Australia’s ASKAP. By expanding their radio view with these various facilities, the researchers were able to observe how the event changed over time, allowing them to develop and test various models.
A Black Hole Explanation
The Chinese astronomers identified a black hole as the most likely cause of these strange observations. Their focus was on a tidal disruption event, which occurs when a star wanders too close to a black hole and is torn apart by the incredibly powerful gravitational forces it encounters. Intriguingly, the researchers found that an event matching the observed optical brightness would require an extremely rare class of black hole.
Black holes are among the most extreme objects in the universe and tend to occupy opposite ends of a mass spectrum. The smaller variety is known as a “stellar-mass” black hole, since these objects form from the collapse of stars. At the other end are supermassive black holes, which anchor entire galaxies. However, intermediate-mass black holes have largely eluded astronomers, partly because their presence can be difficult to detect.
Detecting Intermediate-Mass Black Holes
Crucially, AT2019ijn allowed researchers to identify a new avenue for detecting these rare black holes.
Perspective is important in these detections. When an intermediate-mass black hole’s jet is not aimed directly toward Earth, the event may appear far less intense at optical wavelengths than expected. However, continued observation at radio wavelengths can reveal a much more intense afterglow as the jet evolves. This delayed brightening could therefore provide an important new clue for identifying potential intermediate-mass black holes.
Looking more broadly, the astronomers contend that many extreme black hole events may be missed because observations cease after the initial optical flash, leaving potentially intense radio peaks unobserved. As even more advanced observational platforms come online, such as the upcoming Next Generation Very Large Array, future radio surveys may reveal more such events, potentially illuminating a previously unrecognized class of transients similar to AT2019ijn.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.
An unexpected transmissible cancer has been detected in North American waterways, prompting new concerns about how the disease developed.
Beginning with discoveries in Lake Memphremagog, a glacial lake spanning both Quebec and Vermont, researchers have found strange black cancerous lesions on fish in the waterways of New England and Canada, revealing an environmental mystery.
University of Vermont researchers announced the startling cancer discovery in a recent paper published in Nature, describing how the cells act similarly to a parasite, transmitting between hosts.
This discovery marks the first time a freshwater species has been identified as afflicted with a transmissible cancer, whose long-term population effects are a major concern.
Fish Cancer
Many questions swirl around this discovery, which go far beyond the specific locations and even species affected—such as how cancer operates and how this transmissible form could have originated.
The first indications that something was amiss came from anglers and biologists who both noticed more brown bullhead catfish with raised black patches coming out of Lake Memphremagog. From their first identifications in 2012 to 2014, the prevalence of the disease increased to one in three of these fish.
These particular catfish are often used as a barometer for environmental health, leading the University of Vermont team to consider a pollution-related pathogen after they had ruled out a viral one. Yet under close examination, they discerned the lesions were something even less expected: a type of skin cancer called melanoma, typically caused by sunlight, and therefore, exceedingly rare in bottom-dwelling fish.
Genetic Research
The melanoma finding set the team on a research course looking to identify whether a genetic mutation had left this catfish population particularly susceptible to skin cancer. What they found was surprising: these cancer cells were more closely related to one another than to their host fish’s healthy cells, suggesting transmission.
These transmissible cancers are extremely unusual, with only three types having been discovered previously. None have been found in freshwater or fish species before this; they have been relegated to Tasmanian devils, dogs, and mollusks.
So far, researchers have only identified the malady in larger, spawning-age fish, leading the team to suspect that transmission occurs during spawning behavior. These events do appear to be a likely candidate, as the fish cluster tightly together in shallow water, providing ample opportunity for physical contact among many fish. Furthermore, due to their lack of scales and bottom-dwelling nature, they are more susceptible to the sediment, which could harbor free-floating cancer cells.
In other species, these transmissible cancers may or may not have devastating population-scale effects. Currently, how the Lake Memphremagog catfish population will fare is unknown, although some fish appear to survive years after the infection is first noted.
The University of Vermont team says that the cancer cannot affect humans, and the lake’s drinking water is safe, but they would caution against eating the cancerous fish.
The Root of Cancer
While the Coventry Landfill is in close proximity to the lake, the cancer is spread evenly along the 32-mile-long lake, instead of concentrating near the landfill. Additionally, water tests show that contamination levels are no higher than those of similar North American waterbodies such as Lake Champlain.
Instead, more concerning than a single source of pollution, the team says they have now discovered this cancer in fish located in other ponds and lakes in this region, none of which were close to pollution sources and had pristine water quality.
The one correlation identified so far is that the cancer cells have high arsenic levels, an element naturally found in the region’s soil in high concentrations. Along with this possible link to a natural cause, the researchers are beginning to suspect that the cancer has existed for quite some time, but has simply gone unrecognized. A potential line of evidence for this hypothesis comes from the journals of Henry David Thoreau, who noted a catfish with a similar condition back in the summer of 1852. He even noted that he had come across the fish disease previously, and again wrote of it in 1858.
“By studying how cancers survive and spread outside their original host, we can learn a great deal about what keeps cancers contained—and what happens when those boundaries break down,” co-author Julie Dragon concluded. “These fish provide an opportunity to look at the evolution of cancer.”
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.
The small exoplanets of our Sun’s second-nearest neighbor, Barnard’s Star, are inhospitable wastelands, British astronomers say.
Located six light-years from Earth, Barnard’s Star is separated from our closest neighbor, Alpha Centauri, by about 66° in our sky. Now, University of Cambridge researchers have revealed their findings on this exosolar system in a recent paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
After careful analysis, the astronomers announced that the exoplanets are unlike any in our solar system, presenting a brutal and barren environment.
Barnard’s Star Exoplanets
Scientists only discovered these four small planets orbiting Barnard’s Star in 2025. Unlike anything in our solar system, these orbital bodies fit into a size range larger than Mars, but smaller than Earth or Venus.
Like a peeled onion, these smaller planets are rich in a mineral only found deep below the Earth’s surface. Chemical analysis revealed large amounts of the mineral periclase on the surface of these planets, something typically only found hundreds of kilometers deep on our planet.
“Barnard’s Star has an enormous amount of the element magnesium compared to other stars, so its planets are likely to be rich in magnesium too,” said lead author Xander Byrne from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy. “On Earth, that magnesium goes into making minerals called olivines, which are really important for storing water within the planet.”
A Lack of Water and Atmosphere
Unfortunately for those looking for extraterrestrial life, magnesium serves a different purpose on these exoplanets. Instead of water-storing olivine, it produces the abundant periclase, which is a poor store of water.
Even worse, these inhospitable exoplanets likely no longer have an atmosphere. According to the University of Cambridge team, these ten-billion-year-old planets probably only managed to hold an atmosphere for two billion years at most.
“These planets were always going to be hostile, because they’re really close to their star,” said Byrne. “Even the outermost planet orbits ten times closer than Mercury orbits the Sun. When you’re that close to your star, and have such little gravity, your atmosphere just gets blown off.”
In addition to the lack of atmosphere, the planets’ proximity to Barnard’s Star leaves them tidally locked, like our Moon, with one side always facing toward the star.
Exoplanet Stability
However, there is one positive element to these small planets. Typically, such close-orbiting systems are highly unstable, with the planets shooting out from the system, falling into their host star, or catastrophically colliding. Yet in this case, the system is as ordered as a piece of music.
The three inner planets of the exosolar system have years in a 9:12:16 ratio, producing two of what is known as a “perfect fourth” in music. This musical harmony is known as an orbital resonance, with the same type of effect stabilizing Jupiter’s moons in their orbits around that planet.
While our ability to view Barnard’s Star from Earth may be limited, the European Space Agency’s upcoming Plato mission may allow astronomers to discover ever smaller worlds orbiting in the nearby exosolar system.
“Larger planets are much easier to detect than small ones, so we know about very few sub-Earth planets like the ones in this system,” said Byrne. “But the sensitivity of these new missions will help to reduce this bias, allowing us to discover more and more planets that are small and rocky, like Earth.”
The true significance of the research may lie in the value of a null result. While these planets are bleakly hostile to life, observing this exosolar system’s composition can aid future astronomers in narrowing down the search for extraterrestrial life.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.
For the last 22 years, one of the most bizarre true crime stories ever to grace the program Unsolved Mysteries has confounded amateur investigators and spawned hundreds of pages of online speculation. Who was behind the decade-long torment of Bill and Dorthy Wacker in the 80s and 90s, which included allegations of stalking, robberies, and even assaults?
While any internet true crime enthusiast knows Unsolved Mysteries frequently left out interesting details that can create a rabbit hole of alternative explanations, in this case, the show has been the sole source of information, with no other known period news coverage of the harassment.
That is, until recently, when this author acquired the original police records, spanning almost 100 pages of material, while researching for my podcast, Cease to Exist. The records reveal a wealth of new information, including potential leads on suspects, and answers to questions true crime fans have speculated about for years.
The Wackers claimed to be victims of a long-term harassment campaign. Credit: Film Rise/Unsolved Mysteries
Unsolved Mysteries
In the Unsolved Mysteries season 6 two-hour finale, airing in the spring of 1994, the public met Bill and Dorthy Wacker, an elderly couple from Massillon, Ohio, who claimed to be victims of a bizarre string of harassment stretching back years. Since then, their story has been the subject of considerable speculation, with some believing the whole affair was so unbelievable that the Wackers must have been making it up. On the other hand, Dorothy herself did seem to bear injuries consistent with the couple’s claims. Without any further information, true crime fans dissected every available scrap of evidence, including the accuracy of the reenactments, for possible clues.
“The Wackers are quiet, unassuming people who tend to mind their own business. Hardly the type to draw the wrath of an unseen enemy,” Unsolved Mysteries host Robert Stack said at the beginning of the segment.
The scene then opens with the couple returning to find their home ransacked on January 16, 1985. This was the third claimed incident, but according to the program, the first that was reported.
“After nearly 10 years, Dorothy and Bill Wacker still wonder who and why,” Stock intoned.
The Wacker’s Story
In interview footage with the couple, Bill speculates that someone may be attempting to force the couple to move, although why that would be was unclear, and refers to the perpetrator as “a kook,” which becomes a bit of a meme in online discourse about the case.
Six months after the previous break-in, Dorothy was home alone recovering from heart surgery when she heard a knock at the door. She found a young man who claimed his car had broken down and that he needed to use her telephone. Although she didn’t see a car anywhere, she let the polite stranger in. He made a call, thanked her, and appeared to leave.
Before she knew what had happened, Dorothy awoke tied up on her kitchen floor after having been struck in the head. A neighbor heard her cries through an open window and came to her aid. Although Dorothy’s injury was not serious, there were two strange elements to the crime. First was the graffiti “cheaper, but will do,” shown in the reenactment as having been left on the kitchen wall. Second was the variety of items stolen from the home, including a gun and radio receiver, which were later returned to the Wackers’ porch. Police were baffled by the return of a stolen gun and distributed fliers featuring a sketch of the suspect, but no identification was ever made.
Harassment continued with a series of threatening phone calls that persisted even after the family changed their number, according to Dorothy and her daughter Peggy Hoover. Additionally, nocturnal banging on the outside of the house began, which led the couple to install lights. The only result was a strange note on the front porch reading “your lights are a laugh,” and subsequent notes such as “you scum I’ll get even,” with a backside reading “this time ha ha.” The police never found any fingerprints on the notes and suggested they may have been made by someone using their opposite hand to disguise their handwriting.
The graffiti written on the Wackers’ wall in the Unsolved Mysteries Reenactment (Credit: Filme Rise/Unsolved Mysteries)
Second Attack and Stake Out
The most dramatic events yet occurred in the fall of 1993. Dorothy was walking her dog outside of their home on October 27th when she was attacked again. The segment claimed she suffered “skull lacerations” and was taken to the hospital, but there were no witnesses to the event.
Notably, Sheriff Bruce W Umpleby says that after interviewing neighbors, no one had any information that led them to believe there was a person there. He continued that most crimes have simple motives and there has never been one identified for the strange periodic flurries of activity around the Wackers.
Things reached a climax when the family conducted a stakeout, hoping to finally capture the stalker one November evening. Bill hid inside a trailer in the driveway, while Dorothy and their daughter Cathy stayed inside the home. Across the street, their sons-in-law Dan and Clay sat in a vehicle in a neighbor’s driveway. After almost four hours, they decided to end the stakeout around 10:30 p.m., when they heard a loud bump on the porch. Incredibly, the stalker had apparently evaded the surveillance and thrown a rock onto the Wackers’ front porch with a note reading “get the message.”
At the conclusion of the segment, Bill says he hopes whoever is responsible is caught soon because, if the Wackers were no longer the targets, he feared the individual would simply target someone else.
Unsolved Mysteries Online Speculation
Besides noting that the sheriff’s department had asked Dorothy after the second attack whether Bill could have been the attacker, the series plays the events fairly straight, without directly questioning the couple’s story. The eerie music and Stack’s gravelly voice convey a feeling of serious menace. True crime fans are more divided, with some arguing that the events were too implausible to be real, while others find it unlikely that an elderly couple would fabricate such a wild tale. Notably, another popular Unsolved Mysteries segment, involving the stalking of Cindy James, is also widely believed to have involved a hoax.
Unfortunately, Newspapers.com’s archive of the local paper, The Massillon Independent, has a large gap between the early 1970s and the 2020s. The only other known media appearance by Bill Wacker before his death was in an unrelated citizen-reaction piece about Connie Chung interviewing Newt Gingrich’s mother in the Akron Beacon Journal, although he is wearing an Unsolved Mysteries hat in the picture. The only other items recovered were obituaries stating that Bill had died in 1999 at age 79 and Dorothy in 2020 at age 83. This left armchair sleuths to rely primarily on what appeared in the episode itself, which does raise questions.
One notable detail is that, in the reenactment, Dorothy’s dog doesn’t bark to alert her to the intruder, which seemed uncharacteristic of a small dog. People debated whether this was merely a quirk of the reenactment or reflected how the event actually occurred, with some questioning whether this provided evidence that Bill was behind the assault. Additionally, some found it odd that the stakeout was called off at the relatively early hour of 10:30 p.m. and found the return of stolen items completely unbelievable. Another oddity was the wording of the letters, with phrases like “you scum” and “no junk,” which sounded to some like older adults attempting to mimic the speech of teenagers while using outdated phraseology.
Among those who believe the Wackers, suspicion has frequently fallen on the daughters, who would presumably inherit the home and were not mentioned as suspects in the episode. Particular suspicion has fallen on Peggy, who was not present for the stakeout. Some have also pointed to the phone calls continuing after the Wackers changed their number as possible evidence of an inside job.
One Redditor, sovietbabyy, claimed to be a relative of the Wackers who stumbled upon the case, although they were too young to have ever met Bill and Dorothy themselves. They claimed Bill and his siblings were all dead but asked other family members for more information and were told that the extended family believed the story and that Bill was usually secluded but would help anyone in need. Five years later, a poster using the screen name goawaycommies followed up, claiming to be the same person. In these new posts, the author claimed that Stark County was a high-crime area and that the police were known to be ineffective; therefore, it shouldn’t be surprising that no one was caught.
While it could be debated whether these two posters are actually the same person, the goawaycommies post provided one essential detail that led to a major breakthrough: the Wackers’ address.
Finding the Wackers
In late December, I wrote to the Massillon County Sheriff requesting any files they had on the Wackers. They granted my request in early January, providing 94 pages of documents. Follow-up requests to the North Lawrence Fire Department, who responded to the assaults, as well as inquiries to two of the responding officers and Ricky Lee Pegido, were fruitless. The Sheriff’s office maintains that these documents are all that were found in the file, despite some appearing to be missing, such as a cover sheet without a report and references to a “phone trap” that is not followed up on.
While the officers may not have wanted to talk about these events, what was contained inside was fascinating, providing the names of suspects, neighbors’ opinions on the Wackers, incidents that were not included in the Unsolved Mysteries segment, and another 90s-era “classic” addition: records involving consultation with a psychic about the crimes.
The Wacker home today. Credit: Google Street View
The Reports
Right from the beginning, the documents tell a slightly different story from the television segment. Instead of waiting until the third event, in January 1985, to call police, there was a report concerning the initial August 1984 break-in. This one was different from the others, with gold and diamond jewelry stolen that was not returned and police noting that a credit card may have been used to force the lock.
The police report for the January 1985 break-in contained two notable details: the method of entry and the first-named suspect. Despite having their locked home broken into previously, the Wackers had left a side door unlocked, allowing the burglar to gain entry. Additionally, the report lists a “Randy” as a possible suspect, a young man whose aunt had previously cared for Mrs. Wacker’s elderly mother in the home.
Next, the first assault report appears, which is similar to what was shown in the episode, except that “CHEAPER, BUT WILL DO” was written in a bathroom instead of the kitchen. Additionally, a basement window was cut, through which the perpetrator may have escaped. The man who came to her aid is named here as Jim Pedigo, who says he and his brother had been working in their backyard all morning without seeing or hearing a thing until Dorothy’s cries became evident. In this report, the name is given as “Pedigl,” and it switches back and forth between that and “Pedigo” in the reports (the name “Pedigo” appears in print as a family name in the area in obituaries). When Bill returned, he found items that appeared to have been staged to be taken later from the robbery around the perimeter of the house.
Following this, there is a series of minor reports of items being stolen and returned—oddly, with the Wackers still not locking their doors, despite the first report indicating that had been their former habit.
The Second Assault
The report of the second assault does closely match the program, even down to the controversial dog not barking when the assailant came after Dorothy. Although the Wackers claimed the dog normally ignored its surroundings as it relieved itself, the officer noted on a follow-up visit to the residence that the dog barked when he arrived, which he found suspicious. In the report, Dorothy claimed she had to crawl to the back door to get help from Bill after the attacker fled, which was supported by dirt and scratch marks on her forearms noted by the officer. The officer gave Bill some suggestions, such as installing a light on that side of the house and trimming some trees to remove hiding places.
A lengthy segment of the report regarding the Sheriff’s canvassing of the neighborhood provides some interesting insight into the Wackers’ relationship with their neighbors. This portion notes that:
The neighbors collectively agreed that none of them have had any type of problems. Nor, have they seen or heard any form of disturbance in the area. In fact, several of the neighbors stated that they don’t even lock their doors. Further stated by the neighboring community, most of the neighbors stay to themselves, however, ‘the Wackers bring most of their problems on themselves.’ Apparently the Wackers aren’t the most congenial of persons in the neighborhood, especially with the Shillings and Maddox’s.
The Maddox family is the same household as the Pedigo family, a notable change of relations since Jim Pedigo aided Dorothy. On the other hand, another couple in the neighborhood stated that they regularly played cards with the Wackers, providing a nuanced image of them as people who got along with some but not others.
Suspects Not Named on Unsolved Mysteries
Following this event, both of the daughters began continually contacting the Stark County Sheriff’s office, demanding more attention be paid to their parents’ harassment. One of the items introduced here, but oddly never followed up on, is a “phone trap” put on the Wackers’ phone by their telephone company, Ameritech, to monitor all incoming calls. Although the reports say this is activated, there is no information on whether any claims of harassing calls were ever compared against the phone trap.
There appears to be a missing report explaining where the tip originates from, but officers speak with the son residing at the Maddox/Pedigo residence, Ricky Lee Pedigo, about whether he is aware of an individual by the name of “Shriner” on his mother’s side of the family, which he was not. When they later return to speak with his mother, Barbara Maddox, she claims she is not related to anyone by that name and flippantly remarks that the composite of the suspect in the first attack on Dorothy looks like a young dick Van Dyke, but no one she’s ever seen before.
Next, officers follow up on a tip from daughter Peggy Hoover that a woman named Debbie Shriver’s (not Shriner) ex-husband may be the suspect. After tracing this woman through a former landlord and then her own father, Debbie, now going by Debbie Pedigo, agrees to speak with the Stark County Sheriff’s. She says the composite bears no resemblance to her ex-husband, James Shriver.
Peggy then returns with another tip that a psychic told her the suspect lives within a twelve-mile radius of the Wacker home.
Finally, Peggy provides one last suspect: Barbara Maddox’s stepson, Johnny Lee, whom she says may be because her parents didn’t pay enough attention to him as a boy. At this point, Barbara Maddox has had enough, saying that her stepson hasn’t been to visit in years, and she is going to put up a privacy fence to keep away from the Wackers.
The suspect sketch from the Dorothy Wacker assault. Credit: Film Rise /Unsolved Mysteries
Final Events
From this point on, the banging and rocks being thrown at the home continued. At one point, the Wackers claimed someone had tried to gain entrance to their locked home, but the police report casts suspicion on this. The appraisal was that it appeared as though someone was attempting to make it look like the house was being broken into without causing too much damage, and it was inconsistent with typical burglary techniques.
The final report is from October 1997, when Dorothy heard a loud banging on the house while seated in the living room. An officer responded but could find no damage.
All the reports are bizarre. The daughters appear to be very invested in the case, yet Peggy ultimately seems to be throwing around claims that don’t add up to anything. Was she letting her imagination run away with her, using the events as a cover to harass people she had personal grievances against, or was she really on to something? The “Shriner/Shriver” discrepancy speaks to a minor issue prevalent in the police’s investigations: not confirming the spelling of names, which also occurs with “Pedigl/Pedigo.” Does this indicate the sheriff’s department is generally performing sloppy work, as the Reddit poster implied? While there is room to speculate here, the constantly changing accusations may have undermined Peggy’s credibility with law enforcement.
One possible conclusion is that the very earliest break-in was real, since the stolen items were not returned and the report is consistent with a typical forced entry. Perhaps after that, the Wackers developed a taste for the excitement and attention and hoaxed the rest of it. This would explain the incongruities of items being returned, no one ever seeing anything, their continuing to leave their doors unlocked, and the strange attempt to create the appearance of a forced entry without damaging the home.
But then again, officers reported witnessing injuries to Dorothy after both assaults. Could she have been willing to take things that far? Could the couple have truly been victims? Could one of the children be behind it? Was Bill assaulting her?
None of these questions can clearly be answered from the available evidence; and so, decades after the strange story of the Wackers first came to public attention, the case rests—and another relic of the 1990s remains an unsolved mystery.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.
A new type of synthetic motion developed at City University of New York (CUNY) gives physicists access to impossible, faster-than-light speeds in an experimental environment. Previously, for researchers to explore such extremes of physics, their only option was simulations, and such real-world effects could not be studied in any practical sense.
In a recent paper published in Nature, scientists from CUNY’s Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC) revealed their new wave amplification technique, which mimics motion without any physical movement.
The synthetic motion machine relies on radio frequencies modulated around a ring-shaped structure to create the illusion of motion.
Extreme Black Holes
The SUNY team traces its inspiration back to the work of Sir Roger Penrose more than fifty years ago, when the scientists proposed a scenario in which a particle could leech energy from a black hole.
Frame-dragging measurements, which involve the pull on spacetime around the edge of a black hole’s ultra-fast rotation, have become a major focus for astrophysics in recent years. Penrose was interested in the region where this pull occurs, known as the ergosphere. He suggested that a particle entering the ergosphere may be torn into two pieces, one of which would fall into the black hole, while the half that escaped would contain even greater energy than the original particle.
Another physicist, Yakov Zel’dovich, built on Penrose’s work to describe a more general version of this effect. He predicted that a sufficiently fast-rotating object could transfer energy to a wave, amplifying it.
A Synthetic Motion Machine
In their quest to study how a rotating body can amplify a wave, the researchers produced a radio-frequency device that mimics a spinning motion. Crucially, this mimicry is unbound by certain physical constraints on motion, allowing for incredible speeds beyond what can be mechanically produced, opening up new experimental possibilities.
“Our approach facilitates a new method of wave–matter interaction in which waves with selected rotational properties extract energy from synthetic time-engineered rotation, producing a form of broadband selective amplification,” said principal investigator Andrea Alù, Distinguished Professor and Einstein Professor of Physics at the CUNY Graduate Center and founding director of the CUNY ASRC’s Photonics Initiative.
“This successful experiment moves ideas about extreme rotational dynamics from theory to practice and creates a versatile experimental platform for exploring a broad range of phenomena at the intersection of astrophysics, wave physics, and quantum science,” said lead author Hadiseh Nasari, a postdoctoral researcher with the CUNY ASRC’s Photonics Initiative. “The work has implications for advances in fundamental science and in communications, optics, and photonics.”
Mimicking Motion
For the project, the CUNY team constructed a ring of networked electronic resonators, whose properties were rapidly modulated in a precisely timed sequence, producing a traveling pattern around the ring. The device itself is stationary, yet the modulated pattern led electromagnetic waves to react as though the device were spinning at the speed of the pattern.
“Waves with the appropriate rotational characteristics extracted energy from the system and became amplified, reproducing the essential physics of the Penrose–Zel’dovich process,” said co-lead author Hady Moussa, a former PhD student with the CUNY ASRC Photonics Initiative. “Our approach relies on engineered metamaterials that are designed to control how waves propagate.
This work in developing synthetic motion has implications far beyond just a single theory on wave amplification. Researchers can now access previously unattainable rotational speeds in experimental physics work thanks to the new device.
Beyond those experimental possibilities, this technique could be used in communication and optics applications, including quantum systems. Future work will involve adapting this revolutionary technique beyond the initial problem into practical technologies for information processing and exploring the universe’s most extreme physics.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.
The problem of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, a group of potentially cancer-causing “forever chemicals,” may finally have a solution, thanks to German scientists.
The PFAS group contains more than 10,000 synthetic substances that refuse to break down, leading to the term “forever chemicals,” and which instead build up in the body to cause developmental issues, immune problems, and even cancer.
Now, Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) researchers have reported not one, but two new solutions to the forever chemical problem in recent papers published in the journals Chemical Engineering Journal Advances and Scientific Reports.
One of these new processes for addressing this long-standing environmental problem employs hydrodynamic cavitation, while the other employs cold atmospheric plasma combined with gas dispersion.
Forever Chemicals Explained
PFAS have exceptionally stable carbon-fluorine bonds, which make them difficult to break down. Through industrial wastewater, these forever chemicals are released into oceans and rivers, where they can accumulate in plants, animals, and humans. While some of them are tied to specific health risks, many are still question marks, with their health consequences unclear.
The work at HZDR is part of Germany’s “National Water Strategy,” aimed at protecting the country’s water supplies. In a 2022 preliminary study that the new work built on, researchers degraded PFAS chemicals through a hydrodynamic cavitation process.
Work on these new processes was conducted at the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research (UFZ), confirming that both processes degrade PFAS and produce fluoride, which the researchers hope will soon be adopted in industry.
The First Solution
“In hydrodynamic cavitation, we pass PFAS-enriched water through a constriction, generating small vapor bubbles,” explained co-author Dr. Sebastian Reinecke, head of the Department of Water and Environmental Technologies at HZDR. “When the bubbles burst under the rising ambient pressure in the water downstream of the constriction, the PFAS that are attached to the bubbles are exposed to local temperature spikes of several thousand degrees Celsius.”
While this occurs, highly reactive hydroxyl radicals form during cavitation, which the team believes then attack intermediate products, hastening the breakdown of PFAS.
The researchers demonstrated that PFAS chemicals in tap water were broken down, with higher concentrations of fluoride produced as treatment duration increased. A persistent and well-studied PFAS, perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), was used in the research, with 37% of the dissolved chemical eventually breaking down.
“We are now conducting follow-up experiments to increase the degradation rate,” Reinecke added. “Our goal is to improve the process to a degradation rate of more than 80 percent of the PFAS in the solution and mineralizing more than 50 percent of the fluorine that is bound in the chemicals – that means, breaking down the carbon-fluorine bonds that are typical of PFAS.”
Plasma Vs. PFAS
Dr. Amit Kumar, an environmental engineer at HZDR, led another series of experiments on cold atmospheric plasma and gas dispersion, which offered the advantage of not requiring catalysts or additional chemicals. Kumar applied some of his previous research on breaking down micropollutants to the problem of forever chemicals.
“We generated plasma at the water surface while simultaneously introducing gas into the PFAS-contaminated water,” Reinecke explained. “The PFAS attach to the surface of the gas bubbles. As they rise, the water is constantly circulated. This brings the PFAS to the surface, where they are broken down in the plasma.”
Roughly 35% of the fluorine atoms in these forever chemicals were released as fluoride salts in the process, almost completely degrading long- and short-chain PFAS.
“While this method has significantly faster reaction kinetics than cavitation, it also consumes far more energy per volume unit,” Reinecke notes. “In addition, the process generates numerous transformation products that we have not yet been able to investigate in detail – for instance, gaseous compounds that form during the reaction.”
Scaling PFAS Degradation
With their central ideas proven, the researchers are now focused on scaling up these processes for industrial-scale wastewater applications. Part of this involves increasing the reaction volume from 50 milliliters to 5 liters and combining the two separate processes.
“I believe we’ll achieve high degradation rates by combining the highly reactive species from the plasma with the effects of cavitation,” says Reinecke.
Additionally, follow-up work is currently investigating whether any byproducts of the plasma process are harmful and how to mitigate those effects.
Merging the techniques could lead to a highly efficient new PFAS removal technology, providing a powerful tool for dealing with one of the most significant threats to clean water supplies.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.
Our modern society depends heavily on communications and power networks that are highly susceptible to interference from solar storms, making these volatile space weather events a paramount concern for scientists.
Now, it turns out there may be more to fear than previously realized. Scientists are discovering that there may be no ceiling to the devastating effects solar storms may have on Earth, overturning what little sense of security may exist as a mere mathematical anomaly.
In a recent paper published in Nature, a NASA-led team discovered that the potential impact of solar storms on our technological infrastructure could be substantially more severe than currently recognized.
Solar Storms Reconsidered
According to new research, any past limitations perceived regarding the impact of solar storms on our planet are purely an illusion, which arises from imprecise data collection.
Previous observations of electric currents in the Earth’s upper atmosphere during solar storm events suggested a ceiling to how far they could increase. Yet the new paper claims that uncertainties in solar wind data are falsely giving rise to this idea.
The researchers say that the distance of the spacecraft taking solar wind measurements is the issue. Those spacecraft are millions of miles closer to the Sun than the Earth is, meaning that by the time those winds reach Earth, they have weakened considerably. Additionally, instrument error and the effects of the local plasma and field conditions all come into play.
All this, the researchers say, creates a mismatch between the measured strength of the wind and its effects on our planet’s electrical currents.
Correcting For Distance
The new findings contain one significant difference from existing research: they relied on observation platforms much closer to Earth to collect data, which included spacecraft such as NASA’s MMS and THEMIS.
Launched in 2007, THEMIS consists of five satellites that target the Earth, rather than the Sun, to study our planet’s magnetosphere and auroras. MMS consists of four spacecraft that also study the Earth’s magnetosphere.
Existing charts show the impact of solar winds on Earth leveling off at a certain threshold, which scientists had believed was the maximum saturation possible. However, in new solar wind strength data collected much closer to Earth, more accurately reflecting power at the time of impact, this saturation point disappeared. Instead, this data revealed that there is no ceiling on how heavily solar storms can charge the Earth’s electrical currents.
Solar Storm Impacts
Another crucial element in the NASA-led research is the statistical concept of regression to the mean, which holds that extreme measurements often change as more data come in. In this case, as more data on solar storm impacts on Earth recorded from various distances were collected, the plating effect disappeared. The authors note that similar effects occur in other areas of research, such as climate studies and chronic medical pain.
These new findings present a major challenge to our understanding of space weather. Scientists will now need to conduct many further observations to determine if any such ceiling exists. The threat to our infrastructure may be severe, as satellite communication underpins our modern society, not to mention the power grid, which keeps our world running.
For now, NASA continues to monitor solar storms to prepare for their potentially dangerous effects on our infrastructure, and in light of the new research, the potential for future challenges ahead may be greater than previously realized.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.
For centuries, ancient seafarers have told tales of fabled lost lands. They have been known by many names—Ultima Thule, Hy-Brasil, the Fortunate Isles, and of course, the legendary lost city of Atlantis.
Now, scientists say Earth’s hidden plumbing system may be feeding one of its strangest ecosystems—an area on the Atlantic seafloor that conjures images of such legendary landscapes lost to time and memory.
Known as the Lost City hydrothermal field, this ancient Atlantic oddity is doing more than just broadening our view on how extremophiles thrive in some of our planet’s least hospitable environments: it offers a potential model for how extraterrestrial life may thrive elsewhere in our solar system.
In a recent paper published in Geophysics, Geochemistry, and Geosystems, an international team of researchers finally discovered the system behind these hydrogen- and methane-rich alkaline hot springs that feed the Lost City ecosystem.
The white carbonate chimneys that emit these gases provide an alternative to sunlight as the Lost City’s primary energy source, allowing life to thrive in a challenging deep ocean environment.
A view of the Lost City hydrothermal vent, located adjacent to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (Image Credit: Susan Lang, University of South Carolina/National Science Foundation/ROV Jason 2018 WHOI)
Searching Near The Lost City
Those precious nutrients coming from these vents were created by underground reactions. It turns out that the water feeding the Lost City is likely part of a larger underground system, where extreme processes imbue the liquid with essential nutrients.
The discovery came from nearly a mile below the Atlantis Massif, a large block of Earth’s crust that forms an underwater mountain range. This dome-shaped region stretches for 10 miles and rises 14,000 feet above the ocean floor.
Above, a map shows the location of the Lost City on the Atlantis Massif (Image Credit: NOAA)
Geologists believe this formation originated between 1.5 and 2 million years ago, as tectonic plate movement pulled it out from beneath the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, forming a new feature on the ocean floor.
From aboard the Joint Oceanographic Institutions for Deep Earth Sampling (JOIDES) ship Resolution, scientists drilled their 4,160-foot-deep hole about 2,600 feet north of the Lost City. They were intrigued to find that the water recovered from the hole had a chemical composition extremely similar to that of water emerging from the Lost City vents.
Beneath The Ocean Floor
From their drill site, they pumped water from varying depths up to the surface for examination.
Roughly the first 1,500 feet consisted primarily of seawater and freshwater from the drilling process, yet at lower depths, they found water that had risen from beneath the rock. At the deepest depths, up to 80% of the sample came from these subterranean regions.
Their detailed analyses revealed that the water had reacted with the surrounding minerals to gain calcium while losing magnesium, a reaction that would require prolonged exposure to rocks at a temperature of at least 572°F. Despite this finding, the hole was much cooler when the team took their samples.
Typically, a water-rock reaction with gabbroic and ultramafic rock would produce such results that are high in calcium, yet with no magnesium. Other components, such as lithium, rubidium, cesium, and strontium, were found in the water at both the bore site and Lost City.
One of the Lost City’s many carbonate spires is shown in this image from the 2005 Lost City Expedition (Image Credit: IFE, URI-IAO, UW, Lost City Science Party; NOAA/OAR/OER; The Lost City 2005 Expedition)
The findings are consequential for providing the first direct evidence of this extremely hot water circulating beneath the Atlantis Massif through gabbroic and ultramafic rock. In this hidden plumbing system, seawater reaches deep within oceanic plates, providing energy to these deep-sea environments and potentially supporting their microbial life.
Feeding The Lost City
As researchers have now demonstrated that hydrogen-enriched water can naturally form deep within the Earth through rock reactions, researchers say there are major implications for our understanding of the Earth and beyond.
For one, it adds a new element to Earth’s energy cycles, explaining how life persists under such difficult, dark conditions. Secondly, it offers intriguing new ideas about how life might persist in extraterrestrial environments, as humans continue to search for it elsewhere in the cosmos. The strange conditions of the Lost City ecosystem are thought to be a potential model for how life could persist in the global oceans of ice-covered worlds such as Jupiter’s moon Europa or Saturn’s moon Enceladus.
However, some uncertainty about the samples does remain. Seawater, freshwater, and drilling contaminants were present in the samples, and the exact proportions attributable to gabbro or ultramafic rock are unknown. Also, while this is evidence for an underground connection between the borehole and the Lost City chimneys, it is not conclusive proof that they are connected.
Plans are already underway to return once the borehole has stabilized to collect pristine samples that will allow researchers to answer questions about where and how these reactions occur, as well as the amount of energy they add to the water. From the most inhospitable regions on Earth to the quest for organisms among the stars, the research underway deep within our oceans is providing new answers to how such life persists.
Micah Hanks, Editor in Chief of The Debrief, also contributed to this reporting.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.
An innovative new drone dubbed the “Phantom Twist” can seemingly disappear from view, in a major new robotics advancement offering a close-to-invisible aerial platform.
Its name describes the drone’s rapid spinning motion, which rotates 25 times per second—too fast for the human eye to resolve—thereby acting as a sort of cloak shielding it from visible detection.
The Northwestern University engineering team behind the Phantom Twist revealed their drone during a recent talk at the Sydney, Australia, Robotics: Science and Systems 2026 conference on July 16.
Stealth Drones
“Most efforts to hide drones focus on making them look like their surroundings,” said Northwestern’s Michael Rubenstein, who led the work. “Instead, we asked whether we could design the drone itself around the way humans perceive motion. This idea of low visibility through persistent motion is something few people have explored.”
The Phantom Twist drone’s unique rotation renders it almost invisible when in flight (Image Credit: Northwestern University)
Hiding drones is not a new idea. Other engineers have attempted a variety of techniques, including camouflage, transparent materials, and light-bending to obscure the presence of drones and robots. However, all of those focused on the material the drone’s exterior was constructed from, allowing it to blend into the background. The Northwestern team’s innovation was in how the object moves.
To our eyes, fan blades disappear because they are moving so fast that our eyes cannot track them. The “motion blur” created at these speeds allows the Phantom Twist to almost disappear, leaving only a faint apparition perceptible to the eye.
Nature Drones
While several military applications are immediately obvious, the team instead says their work could be useful in developing noninvasive wildlife and environmental monitoring. Loud drones can scare wildlife, disrupting them as they scatter, but by blending in, the Phantom Twist could capture a much more accurate picture of natural behaviors.
Their perception-based design eschews the traditional quadcopter design for a single propeller, with a body that spins in the opposite direction, creating the optical illusion that the drone essentially disappears.
As it spins, the Phantom Twist’s movements become virtually invisible to the human eye (Image Credit: Northwestern University)
“For a typical quadrotor drone, the propellers are spinning, but the robot is stationary,” Rubenstein said. “So, you still see its body. For our drone, the whole thing is rotating, so there are no stationary parts.”
Creating the Phantom Twist
Using AI and optimization algorithms, the Northwestern team began by generating 20,000 different arrangements of a drone’s propeller, motor, circuit board, and other necessary components. Eventually, the algorithm landed on the most promising configurations, after which the researchers simulated and superimposed them onto real-world backgrounds.
Another computer model mimicked human perception, allowing the engineers to assign a perception score for how visible each design would be to human eyes. An algorithm then optimized those designs by moving components to minimize the visibility score even further.
“The design process was fully automated,” Rubenstein said. “Then, when we were confident that a drone met all our criteria, we built it.”
A Revised Drone
The key feature of this design is that the individual components are at such varying heights and angles that they do not overlap as it spins, maximizing the motion-blur effect and creating the appearance of a faint cloud rather than a solid object.
“The human eye takes time to accumulate signals, roughly analogous to the exposure time of a camera,” said Alexander, an expert in computer vision. “When an object spins quickly, we perceive it as blurring out and losing distinct features. Because this new drone is almost entirely transparent, its few opaque components are visually averaged with the background for an overall appearance of a slight haze.”
Currently impeding the drone from being even more imperceptible to the eye are the wires and support rods that remain visible, as well as the engine noise it produces, which is readily discernible. Going forward, the team plans to continue improving Phantom Twist in future iterations to incorporate more transparent materials and reduce the noise it produces.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.
Egyptian princesses may have trained extensively with weapons, according to a new archaeological assessment that suggests the weapons buried with their mummies were more than mere symbols.
The researchers examined five mummies of Egyptian Middle Kingdom royal women for a new paper published in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology, finding that their musculature indicates they led physically active lives.
Their work offers new insight into a long-standing question: whether the weapons buried with these royal women served a practical purpose or were simply symbolic grave goods.
Discovering Egypt’s Mummies
“Members of the royal family, especially the women, were active participants in skilled, physically demanding activities such as archery and hunting,” said lead author Dr Zeinab Hashesh. “This conclusion is supported by the way their bones developed to sustain heavy muscle use, which corresponds directly to the weapons discovered in their tombs.”
On a western plateau overlooking the Nile Valley lies the Memphis Necropolis, a 19-mile-long series of funerary complexes. One of these, a collection of pyramids and shaft tombs known as Dahshur, includes the pyramid of Amenemhat III, where two of the mummies were recovered during excavations begun in 1894 by Jacques de Morgan. These first discoveries were King Hor and Princess Noub-Hotep.
Later in 1894, de Morgan began excavating Amenemhat II’s pyramid complex at Dahshur. There, in early 1895, he discovered what would later be identified as four daughters of the pharaoh: Princesses Ita and Khenmet, buried together in one chamber, and Princesses Itaweret and Sathathormeryt in another.
Only the remains of King Hor and Princess Noub-Hotep underwent scientific examination at the time of their discovery. Eventually, all six sets of remains were transferred to the Egyptian Museum in 1915, where they remained lost until their rediscovery in 2020.
Remains of the four daughters of Amenemhat II. Credit: Images provided by Zeinab Hashesh
Weapons of the Egyptian Dead
The complex was unusual because these women were buried with objects typically associated with men, including bows and arrows, and a dagger placed inside Princess Ita’s coffin.
The mummification techniques used on the remains were relatively crude compared with those employed in later Theban burials. As a result, the remains are poorly preserved, with soft tissues reduced to powder, some bones entirely missing, and the princesses’ skulls lost during the early 1900s. Fortunately, enough skeletal material survived to allow researchers to estimate their height, sex, age at death, illnesses, and injuries.
“Princess Ita was a young woman aged between 28 and 34 with strong upper-body muscle attachments, suggesting she habitually used weapons like maces or daggers,” said Hashesh. “Princess Khenmet was a woman in her late 30s or 40s who showed signs of thinning bones, but had very robust ligament attachments. Princess Itaweret was a young woman aged between 20 and 34 who survived broken ribs and foot fractures; her skeleton shows she was a skilled archer.”
All four sisters’ bones showed signs of physically active lifestyles consistent with weapons training.
“We found pronounced development in the upper limbs of these individuals, which correlates to repetitive, high-intensity actions like pulling a bowstring or stabilizing a weapon, proving these activities were habitual throughout their lives,” explained Hashesh. “This directly explains the presence of bows, arrows, and maces in the women’s tombs; these were not just symbolic gifts but tools they actively used.”
A Hard Life, Even for Royalty
The researchers suspect that either a blow or a fall caused Princess Itaweret’s broken ribs, and noted that such injuries were common across all the sets of remains. They also discovered evidence of inbreeding, as the sisters’ spinal abnormalities suggest their parents were closely related.
“These injuries were most likely caused by accidents, falls, hard blows, or other impacts linked to an active lifestyle, whether through hunting, military training, or other demanding activities,” said Hashesh. “What is remarkable is that the injuries healed well, which suggests they had access to advanced medical care for their time.”
Work on these mummies remains incomplete, however, hampered by the loss of the skulls. Moving forward, the researchers would like to conduct a stable isotope analysis to better understand the nutritional deficiencies detected in the bones.
“Our dream would be to go far beyond simply identifying the Dahshur royals,” said Hashesh. “We would try to tell their full life stories, their families, health, and even their political roles, with as much detail as possible. Beyond the science, we would preserve the remains, create 3D prints for teaching and virtual exhibitions, and display them alongside their jewelry, weapons, and funerary objects. All of this would be done with respect, ensuring the remains are presented ethically, just as they were originally buried.”
“Their objects and jewelry are truly fascinating, breathtaking in their craftsmanship. Yet, while archaeologists have long focused on preserving these treasures, the people themselves were often forgotten. Our study seeks to change that.”
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.
Login
