Detective work by a team of space-weather experts has discovered the truth about a historical event that had been thought to be the first-ever case of technological disruption by geomagnetic activity from the sun, but has now been shown to have taken place seven years later.

From it being too hot or too wet to leaves on the track or cows on the line, there's a fine tradition of what the British public consider to be flimsy excuses for delays on the trains. Yet an 1871 edition of the journal Nature describes a very different event that caused a train departing Exeter, in Devon on the south-west coast of the U.K., to be delayed by 16 minutes: a solar storm that flooded the railway signals' electrical telegraph network with current.

"The Exeter train delay is a fascinating story because it sits right at the point where emerging technologies first began to encounter the realities of the space environment," said Jim Wild, who is a professor of space physics at Lancaster University and also the President of the Royal Astronomical Society, in a statement.

The event has frequently been cited as the first example of a solar storm disrupting technology on Earth, but when a team led by Wild went back through historical records to investigate further, they found that things didn't add up.

The original report in Nature stated that the electrical disturbance occurred at 10:05pm local time on Oct. 18, 1841. However, Wild's team found that particular train line didn't open until 1846.

So, they delved deeper into the history books to figure out the truth.

"Our research has a hint of a detective story — piecing together a wide range of archived records to better understand a historically severe space-weather event," said team-member Mike Hapgood, a space weather expert at RAL Space, which is the UK's National Space Laboratory, in Oxfordshire.

Combining data from railway timetables, old newspapers, plus historic reports of solar observations and the northern lights and digitized geomagnetic data, Wild and Hapgood's team were able to conclude that the most likely date for the train delay was Oct. 18, 1848, which coincided with a strong solar storm that hit Earth.

This revised date knocks it off top spot in the chronological list of such events. The first recorded disruption to electrical technologies is now a disturbance on the Midland railway network, which had lines covering much of the U.K., in March 1847.

"Although this means it is not the earliest recorded space weather impact, it remains one of the first clear examples of solar activity disrupting critical infrastructure," Wild said. "It also demonstrates the value of combining scientific records with contemporary newspaper reports and archival documents when reconstructing historic space weather events."

The case reminds us that space weather has been a hazard to technology and modern systems for a long time, and isn't just a recent problem.

"Society has been experiencing the effects of space weather on technology for almost as long as electrical technologies have existed," said Wild.

The most dramatic example is the aforementioned Carrington event of 1859, representing the most significant solar storm on record as it caused telegraph poles to spark and battery power supplies to be disrupted. By this point, telegraph operators had grown used to electrical disturbances associated with auroral activity, but even the Carrington storm shocked them — quite literally in some cases, as extra current ran down the telegraph lines — with its ferocity. Should a similar event occur today, it would cause huge black outs, knock out power grids, disrupt communications and fry satellites.

"While today's space weather [monitoring] capabilities are far more advanced than anything available in the 1800s, the modern technologies we depend on are also much more vulnerable to solar storms," said Hapgood.

The current solar cycle 25 peaked in Oct. 2024 and we are just beginning to come out of an extended period of maximum activity. However, it remains to be seen how the rest of this cycle will play out before reaching solar minimum in about 2030. We've already seen severe geomagnetic storms caused by space weather in May 2024 — will we experience another powerful storm before the decade is out?

As the newest heavy hitter in orbital observatories continues the journey to its final destination, NASA has begun the process of switching the spacecraft on.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched on Aug. 30, and is on a three-month long trek to Lagrange point two (L2). L2 is a relatively idle orbital sweet spot almost a million miles from Earth that will allow Roman to remain on the planet's night side and keep the bright sun to its back. It's an optimal location for the telescope to operate its two primary instruments, the Wide Field Instrument (WFI) and its Coronagraph Instrument.

Neither are ready to begin collecting science, and will undergo another month or so of calibrations and tests before Roman can begin its mission, but initial downlinks from the telescope indicate nominal readings on its components as NASA teams continue its commissioning. "This is a huge milestone for the team at Goddard, our industry teams at BAE Systems, Inc. and Teledyne, and our science centers," said Josh Schlieder, the Wide Field Instrument scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, in a statement.

The WFI is a 300-megapixel infrared camera designed to survey enormous swaths of the sky. Scientists plan to use the imager to take fast snapshots of the cosmos, study dark energy, and map the distribution of matter throughout the universe. It uses 18 infrared detectors that NASA says combine for a sensing area about the size of a laptop; by comparison, a typical digital camera imaging sensor covers about the size of a postage stamp.

Before engineers could switch on the WFI, they spent about 10 days allowing the instrument to dry out and shed contaminants that may have accumulated prior to launch. The WFI was kept at a relatively warm (for space) -85 degrees Fahrenheit (-65 Celsius). On Friday (Sept. 11), Roman teams turned off the instrument's heater to allow it to cool to around -225 Fahrenheit (-143 Celsius), at which point it was cold enough to activate its infrared detectors. The detectors continued cooling afterward toward their eventual operating temperature of about -300 F (-183 C).

Following the successful activation of its infrared sensors, engineers moved on to calibrate the WFI's element wheel, which filters individual wavelengths for detection using a system of prisms and other optic mechanisms. And, on the morning of Sept. 13, Roman teams confirmed the focus components were functioning nominally.

Roman's coronagraph also completed its first major steps toward operation. The instrument is controlled by the Coronagraph Commanding Center at Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California, where operators were able to verify that they could remotely operate the instrument’s electronic and mechanical systems. The coronagraph functions using a series of mirrors, masks and sensors to block the light of a distant star in order to detect the much fainter light of planets in that star’s orbit.

Tests on the coronagraph also included warming the device to 72 degrees Fahrenheit (22 Celsius) — nominal for operating conditions in controlled environments on Earth, but quite warm compared to the WFI’s -300 F (-183 C) operating temperature. The extra heat allows the Coronagraph to maintain conditions similar to those inside NASA test chambers so engineers can more easily simulate tests on Roman's deformable mirrors.

"Now that this test is complete, we've been decontaminating: sitting idle with our detectors warm so anything that’s stuck to the surface, such as water or trace chemicals, will tend to leave it,” said Eric Cady, an optical engineer leading commissioning efforts for the Roman Coronagraph at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Decontamination procedures on Roman's coronagraph will continue for 30 days, along with periodic checks and other minor calibrations. That will occupy a portion of the observatory's remaining journey to L2, which is expected to last about 12 more weeks. NASA says Roman remains on track to release its first science images in early 2027. And, thanks to the precision of Roman's SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch vehicle and fuel savings during Roman's early trajectory corrections, the telescope is expected to have enough propellant to operate for the next 22 years.

When stars the size of our sun die, they leave behind powerful stellar remnants called white dwarfs — and these white dwarfs can transform into even more extreme objects called neutron stars, composed of the densest material in the universe. However, scientists have found that conditions must be "just right" for the major makeover to occur. You can think of it like a cosmic "Goldilocks" situation.

As it turns out, the white dwarf has to be feeding on a companion star like some kind of cosmic vampire.

Neutron stars and white dwarfs are both born when stars run out of the fuel supplies needed for nuclear fusion happening in their cores, but the difference between the two lies with their masses.

Stars with masses similar to that of the sun end their lives when they run out of hydrogen in their cores. This halts the nuclear fusion process — which involves converting that hydrogen to helium — leading to the stars collapsing and shedding their outer layers to become a white dwarf with around the mass of the sun crammed into the width of Earth.

When stars with masses around eight times that of the sun collapse after running out of hydrogen in their cores, they generate enough pressure and heat in these cores to fuse the produced helium into even heavier elements. This process only ends when the star attains a core of iron. The final collapse results in a supernova explosion and creates a neutron star with a mass between one and two times that of the sun. That's the usual way neutron stars form.

However, what if there's a bridge between the white dwarf scenario and neutron star scenario? Scientists have long suspected there is indeed a pathway for a white dwarf to become a neutron star. This new work maps out that pathway, calling it accretion-induced collapse (AIC).

"In AIC, the progenitor is already a stellar remnant, and the trigger is not its own evolution but material handed to it by a companion," team leader Laurenz Thümmler of ETH Zurich told Space.com.

The researcher added that an AIC begins with a stellar remnant in the form of a white dwarf, while the traditional route to birthing a neutron star begins with a massive "living" star. Yet, in the AIC, the collapse of an overfeeding white dwarf continues in a broadly similar way to the collapse of a massive star that creates a neutron star.

As Thümmler explains, in both cases, the neutron star creation process involves the massive star's core imploding and zippy particles called "neutrinos" carrying away energy from the event. However, an important difference is in the "standard" massive star collapse scenario, the subsequent core-collapse supernova and neutron star birth happens inside a thick envelope of material that has been ejected during the massive star's death throes. In AICs, however, this thick envelope of matter is absent.

"AIC is expected to be faint and fast, and why so little matter is ejected compared with an ordinary supernova. Not all white dwarfs could undergo an AIC, and that is the essential point."

Though AICs have been theorized about for years, Thümmler and team wanted to know what characteristics a white dwarf would need in order to undergo this transformation. They set about investigating this using 3-dimesional simulations.

It's what is inside that counts

Most white dwarfs consist of carbon and oxygen. However, some stars collapse to form a white dwarf composed of oxygen, neon and magnesium. That only happens for a narrow range of stellar masses, meaning this composition represents a minority population of white dwarfs.

When carbon and oxygen white dwarfs overfeed on stellar material from a companion or donor star, they eventually reach the so-called Chandrasekhar limit, usually around 1.4 stellar masses. Above this limit, they can go supernova. They don't become neutron stars as a result of these "Type 1a" supernovas, however, but are rather completely destroyed. Oxygen, neon and magnesium white dwarfs can avoid that destruction thanks to their high densities.

"They are typically born more massive and denser than carbon-oxygen white dwarfs and therefore require less additional mass to approach the Chandrasekhar limit," Thümmler said.

However, Thümmler and colleagues discovered this isn't the only condition needed to provoke an AIC. The white dwarf can't be too greedy either.

The team found that the accretion rate, or rate at which material from the donor star falls onto the white dwarf, has to fall within a fairly narrow window to allow an AIC to occur.

"If it is too low, nova eruptions can expel much of the accumulated material again; if it is too high, winds, envelope expansion, or binary interaction can prevent the white dwarf from reaching the conditions required for collapse," Thümmler said. "The accretion has to be fast enough, and steady enough, to get it there without triggering explosive burning along the way.

"When those conditions hold, electrons are captured onto neon and magnesium nuclei. This removes the pressure supporting the star, and the collapse follows."

All this means that AICs are expected to be rare events, although the rate at which they occur remains highly uncertain.

The team also found the environment around AICs is somewhat surprising.

"We expected the most neutron-rich material, which produces the heaviest elements, to emerge along the rotation axis, since that is where the magnetically driven outflow is strongest," Thümmler said. "It does not."

Instead, the team's models revealed neutron-rich material emerging at the mid-latitudes of white dwarfs as they transform into neutron stars. This is region where the outflows of matter driven by intense magnetic fields collide with winds heated by energy-carrying neutrinos.

Thümmler explained that this is significant because it means that these events would appear different based upon the angle at which they are observed.

How to spot white dwarf transformations

Laurenz said these AICs could be identified by Vera C. Rubin Observatory and other telescopes as a bright ultraviolet and optical event lasting two to three days, potentially accompanied by X-ray emissions and longer-lasting radio emissions.

However, the neutron stars created by such events may be difficult to distinguish from stellar remnants birthed in the traditional way.

"They are expected to populate the lower end of the neutron-star mass distribution because the collapsing white dwarf has a mass close to the Chandrasekhar limit and ejects relatively little material," Thümmler said. "However, ordinary stellar-collapse channels, particularly those involving low-mass progenitors, can also produce neutron stars with masses of approximately 1.1 to 1.4 solar masses, so a low mass alone would not uniquely indicate an AIC origin."

The team isn't done investigating AICs, with Thümmler explaining there are two main approaches to take next.

"The first is to make the predicted light curves more reliable by following both the radioactive heating and energy injection in substantially greater detail," Thümmler said. "This requires distinguishing energy carried by gamma rays, which can escape relatively early from the low-mass ejecta, from that deposited more efficiently by charged particles, while also modelling how the neutron star wind heats and accelerates the heavy-element-rich material."

The team's simulations can then be used to follow the expansion of the ejecta from the AIC and calculate how the observed light curve and spectra depend on viewing angle.

"This work is currently underway," Thümmler said. "The second direction is to test the robustness of the explosion geometry, since our present models begin with a relatively simple magnetic-field configuration and more complex or tilted fields may produce different angular ejecta patterns."

The team's research is available to view as a pre-print on the paper repository site arXiv.

An ethereal and magnificent display of gas and dust stretches across the cosmos in a spectacular new image captured by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.

What is it?

Glowing wisps of translucent gas and dust paint a striking image of the star-forming region IC 348 in this new JWST snapshot. In the image, you can see IC 348, a region found about 1,000 light-years away.

In this vast expanse of gas and dust, cold molecular hydrogen gas collapses to create new stars. And this image has no shortage of suns, with twinkling stars speckling the entire cosmic landscape, diffraction spikes and all.

But while this is a star-forming region, objects are found here as well. This image was captured as part of a scientific search for brown dwarfs, which are objects that form like stars but aren't massive enough to kickstart hydrogen fusion in their cores.

Why is it incredible?

Brown dwarfs are one of the great mysteries of our universe. Not as massive as the least massive stars, but more massive than the biggest planets, brown dwarfs are strange objects stuck in the middle.

Brown dwarfs do emit some light and heat, which helps scientists to find them, though doing so can be tricky, as they're much cooler than stars and not that bright (at least in visible light). However, despite being dim, they give off infrared radiation, allowing them to be spotted by infrared instruments aboard space telescopes like JWST.

This incredible new image is part of an observing program that aims to use JWST to find and study the smallest brown dwarfs. In 2022, researchers looking at IC 348 found brown dwarfs just a few times more massive than Jupiter, so they were on the very small end. Researchers hope to find even smaller brown dwarfs to help them better understand how these strange objects form and vary across space.