A newly published study reports that tropical cyclones were far more common during the Late Paleozoic Ice Age than many climate reconstructions have suggested. Led by Yan, Macarewich, Jiang, and colleagues, the work appears in Nature Communications (2026) and reframes how Earth’s cold interval coexisted with warm-water storm systems.

The researchers investigated geological signatures linked to extreme marine events, combining stratigraphic evidence with climate-model constraints. Their goal was to distinguish ordinary seasonal variability from the kind of widespread, repeated disturbances that characterize tropical cyclone belts.

A key technical advance in the study is the integration of paleoclimate boundary conditions with storm-resolving dynamical reasoning. Instead of treating cyclone activity as a simple function of temperature alone, the team considered large-scale patterns that govern where warm oceans can persist long enough to power rotating storms.

The results point to an expanded region of conditions favorable for cyclogenesis. Even though the planet was globally in an ice-age mode, ocean–atmosphere coupling—driven by uneven heat storage, changing circulation, and shifting storm tracks—likely enabled tropical systems to form across parts of the tropics more frequently than expected.

The authors describe “widespread” activity, implying that cyclone impacts were not limited to rare episodes. This interpretation aligns with the idea that cooling did not fully suppress tropical cyclone energetics; rather, it altered the geography and intensity distribution of storm-prone environments.

Using the preserved sedimentary record, the study connects storm activity to repeated depositional pulses. Those pulses, they argue, reflect basin-scale disturbance rather than local weather anomalies, strengthening the case for frequent tropical cyclone events during this interval.

From a broader perspective, the findings have implications for how we understand resilience and feedbacks in past climates. If cyclones continued to thrive under ice-age background states, then tropical extremes may persist through major global reorganizations.

The study’s viral potential is clear: it challenges an intuitive narrative that “ice ages mean calm tropics,” and replaces it with a more nuanced picture in which warm-water dynamics and circulation shifts can sustain storminess despite global cooling.

Below are the details available from the provided text:

Subject of Research: Tropical cyclone activity during the Late Paleozoic Ice Age.

Article Title: Widespread tropical cyclone activity during the Late Paleozoic Ice Age.

Article References: Yan, Q., Macarewich, S., Jiang, N. et al. Widespread tropical cyclone activity during the Late Paleozoic Ice Age. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-75609-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-75609-1

I didn’t want to have to depend on a weather app to know when the storms are coming.

A technique currently used to track whale vocalizations could be adapted to pick up the hydrodynamic pressure fields created as they swim, researchers in Norway have demonstrated. Through analysis of backscattered light in an undersea optical fibre, Robin Rørstadbotnen and Martin Landrø at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) showed how silent whales can be detected as they swim close to the fibre. The duo hopes the discovery could ultimately provide a valuable new tool for whale conservation.

With the combined disruption of climate change and human activity, whales are rapidly being forced into new habitats and migration patterns. To understand these profound shifts in behaviour, conservationists widely rely on a technique named distributed acoustic sensing (DAS), which detects acoustic waves via the strain they induce on optical fibres.

When coherent laser pulses are passed through a fibre, a small portion of laser light is inevitably scattered back to the source by small fluctuations in the fibre’s structure and density. If the fibre is strained by an acoustic wave, the oscillating pressure field imprints a phase shift on this backscattered light, which varies in proportion to the degree of strain.

So far, this approach has been used to pick up whale vocalizations: the loudest sounds produced by any animal, which can travel for thousands of kilometres through the ocean. By analysing backscattered light across the global network of undersea optical fibres, researchers have gathered valuable information about how the habitats and migration paths of these marine mammals are changing.

“At NTNU, we started activity within distributed acoustic sensing in 2016,” Rørstadbotnen describes. “When the Center for Geophysical Forecasting was launched in 2021, this technology became a key field of interest.”

Despite the value of data that can be gathered through whale vocalizations, the approach leaves conservationists with a significant blind spot for the majority of the time when whales are silent. To address this limitation, Rørstadbotnen and Landrø considered how DAS could be adapted to pick up the hydrodynamic pressure and velocity fields constantly being created by the whales moving through the water, which generates ultralow-frequency signals similar to those created by the movement of ships.

To test this idea, the duo revisited scattering data gathered from a seabed optical fibre off the coast of Svalbard in the Norwegian Arctic. After filtering the data for a selected band of frequencies, they carried out frequency–wavenumber analysis to determine how rapidly the signals varied along the length of the fibre. Just as they hoped, “we found that this new approach could be applied to detect silent whales, given that they are swimming close to the fibre optic cable,” Rørstadbotnen says.

Through this analysis, the researchers were able to identify ships crossing the fibre from depths of up to 413 m, and at a maximum distance of 550 m from the fibre. They also managed to determine the vessel speeds and roughly estimate their sizes. Crucially, they were also able to distinguish the speeds and approximate sizes of silent whales swimming less than 40 m away from the fibre, as well as estimating their depths.

“Since we also recorded the acoustic signals in the frequency range from 5 to 100 Hz, we could identify whales when they were vocalizing closer to the sea surface,” Rørstadbotnen describes. “Thereby, we could use this information as a strong indication that the low-frequency signal observed a bit later in time was most likely generated by the whale moving closer to the fibre.”

Having demonstrated this possibility, Rørstadbotnen and Landrø now hope that their technique could provide researchers with a new tool for tracking whales around the world, even when they aren’t vocalizing. “In addition, this method can potentially detect toothed whales that vocalize in the high-frequency band outside what is normally recorded for distributed acoustic sensing,” Rørstadbotnen adds.

Beyond its potential for whale conservation, the duo is also hopeful that the technique could help researchers build up a more extensive picture of marine mammals more generally, along with other vital elements of fast-changing marine ecosystems.

The research is described in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The post Undersea optical fibres detect the motion of silent whales appeared first on Physics World.

Pollinating insects form a vital part of any ecosystem, enabling the biodiversity that we see on Earth today. However, biodiversity is in rapid decline around the world, and monitoring insect species is a difficult task that often requires some insects to be killed. To support the conservation of biodiversity, which is critical to ensure the sustainability of human civilization, more robust monitoring is required. In a study published in PNAS Nexus, researchers have developed a new method to identify and classify individual insects, based on radar imaging and machine learning.

Radar has long been used to study migrating insects that fly at high altitudes and in large numbers, but such systems typically perform wide-area, long-range monitoring. However, thanks to a combination of millimetre-wave radar and machine learning, narrow focused identification is now possible, by detecting changes in the radar reflection of insects caused by the flapping of their wings.

“Having a background in antenna engineering, there was always the question of whether this technology can be used to address some of the environmental challenges that we’re facing,” says co-lead author Adam Narbudowicz from the Technical University of Denmark. “Some five or six years ago, we started talking with [co-author] Ian [Donohue] about those possibilities, and eventually the idea of micro-Doppler emerged, which seemed feasible from an engineering point of view and could provide some useful data on biodiversity.”

The approach taken in this study doesn’t focus on morphological features of the insects, as these are difficult to detect with radar. Instead, it uses the harmonic patterns generated by the micro-Doppler effect of an insect beating its wings as a detection strategy. Millimetre-wave radar can provide insight into biomechanical characteristics not visible with cameras, and these characteristics are encoded in the harmonic patterns of the wingbeat.

The team used machine learning to improve the accuracy of the identification and incorporated a SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations) analysis – an explainable AI tool that interprets and explains key outputs and prioritizes key features – to identify which signal features are the most critical for differentiating insect species. The SHAP analysed each insect across the full spectrum of micro-Doppler harmonics, extracting key features including fundamental wingbeat frequency, energy distributions, cepstral coefficients (sound signals) and how quickly an insect’s wing movement change. These data were then used to train the machine learning model.

The actual process of obtaining this data from the insects involved capturing insects at the Trinity College Dublin campus and placing them in a plastic box on top of a millimetre-wave antenna that recorded their radar signatures. The researchers then released the insects back into the wild. After data capture, the relevant micro-Doppler features were extracted from the data for model training.

The model allowed non-invasive monitoring of different insects and could distinguish between bees and wasps with 96% accuracy. The model also classified five key pollinating insect species – red-tailed bumblebee, buff-tailed bumblebee, moss carder bumblebee, western honeybee and common wasp – with an accuracy of 85%.

“I think the most impressive thing is that we can detect and classify them with such an accuracy. From a biological point of view, it’s impressive how different species beat their wings in different manner, and from an engineering point of view it’s fascinating how different wingbeats affect harmonics of radar micro-Doppler reflections,” says Narbudowicz. “Those differences are of course impossible to see just by looking at spectrograms, but it appears that a sufficiently trained machine learning algorithm can see them.”

Narbudowicz points out that the current study used precise lab-grade transceivers and a relatively controlled set-up, and that the natural next step is to move this technology to outdoor field deployment. “This requires a number of steps,” he explains. “Firstly, the device needs to be miniaturized, and battery operated; the transceiver will be less accurate than the one used in the lab, but a big problem is the ground truth verification, since in the field it can be difficult to verify exactly which species flew over the sensor.”

Despite the greater challenge with deploying the technology in the field today, the researchers suggest that this radar reflection approach could be utilized in the future in a fly-through device, which would make it much easier and cheaper to achieve non-lethal monitoring of insect biodiversity in different environments.

The post Radar identifies insect species via reflections from wingbeats appeared first on Physics World.

Dalila grew up in the Tunisian coastal city of Gabès and is accustomed to the heavy, acrid smell from the state-owned phosphate processing plant about a 10-minute walk from her home. On days when noxious fumes fill the air, Dalila rushes to tightly shut the windows and tells her children to hurry indoors. She washes them, believing it lessens harmful effects from chemicals. Emissions can last all day. Residents may get little or no advance warning. But one day in September 2025, children were at school when gases spread. Some students fell to the ground, complaining they had difficulty breathing. Others said they felt like they were suffocating. Dalila’s daughter said she felt like she was choking. Dalila rushed her to a government-run hospital. When she asked about test results or the type of substances that may have caused her difficulty breathing, Dalila said she did not get clear answers. The incident sickening the schoolchildren helped spark mass protests in the streets of Gabès, with people waving banners that read “Stop Pollution” and “Move The Plant.” It is not the first time that residents have protested water and air pollution from the factory. Dalila feels that she and others in Gabès are being ignored. They are far from alone. Fishermen report coastal waters were once abundant with fish, but, now, their nets come up empty. Scientific studies provide evidence that environmental damage poses a danger to the health of those living nearby. People take part in a demonstration against pollution…This article was originally published on Mongabay

The Space Development Agency was established in 2019 to help speed up the deployment of US military space systems by sidestepping the Pentagon's traditional sluggish bureaucracy.

Seven years later, SDA is finally launching its first batches of operational satellites, just as the Pentagon plans to shutter the semi-autonomous agency and fold it back into the Space Force's procurement pipeline, newly reorganized under several program acquisition executives in a bid to streamline weapons buying.

SDA's fate is not a surprise, and lawmakers in both houses of Congress have backed the agency's closure in drafts of this year's National Defense Authorization Act.

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A new study is turning an elegant quantum idea into a practical platform for light. In research published in Light: Science & Applications, physicists report “topological Jackiw–Rebbi” states engineered inside photonic van der Waals heterostructures—systems built by stacking atomically thin materials with precisely tailored interfaces. The result is a photonic phenomenon that echoes how particles can be trapped at boundaries where the rules of their governing equations change.

The work builds on the classic Jackiw–Rebbi mechanism, originally proposed for relativistic particles. In those models, a localized mode appears when a mass term flips sign, effectively creating a domain wall. The authors translate this concept into optics by designing photonic structures where an effective “mass” characterizing light propagation changes across an interface.

What makes the platform especially compelling is the van der Waals architecture. Unlike conventional fabrication routes that can introduce disorder, the layered nature of these materials enables sharp, controllable boundaries and tunable photonic band structures. By adjusting the stacking and interlayer optical responses, the researchers create conditions in which topological modes become robust against typical imperfections.

The study emphasizes that these states are not merely conventional guided resonances. Instead, they are tied to topology: the light modes are associated with an invariant property of the band structure. As a consequence, the Jackiw–Rebbi-like photonic states are expected to persist even when the system’s details vary, so long as the relevant symmetry and band configuration remain intact.

Topological protection is more than a slogan. In photonics, it can translate into reduced sensitivity to fabrication tolerances and a pathway toward devices that rely on stable boundary transport. The paper therefore positions these localized states as building blocks for future optical components that route signals along designed interfaces.

The authors demonstrate the concept theoretically and connect it to experimental observables by focusing on how the interface should host modes localized near the domain wall region. Such localization is a hallmark of the Jackiw–Rebbi scenario, now realized in a controllable, designer photonic environment.

Beyond fundamental interest, the approach could influence the design of reconfigurable photonic circuits. Because van der Waals stacks can be combined and adjusted, the same topology-driven logic may be extended to new material systems, wavelengths, and device geometries.

Overall, the report signals a broader trend: using topological field-theory ideas to engineer light–matter behavior in atomically precise platforms, potentially enabling the next generation of robust, interface-based photonic technologies.

Subject of Research: Topological photonic states (Jackiw–Rebbi) in van der Waals heterostructures.

Article Title: Topological Jackiw-Rebbi states in photonic Van der Waals heterostructures.

Article References: Randerson, S.A., Bouteyre, P., Hu, X. et al. Light Sci Appl 15, 323 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41377-026-02392-5

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1038/s41377-026-02392-5

Keywords:

Known for tracking California wildfires, Watch Duty is moving beyond that mission. Millions of people are turning to it for help.

A lack of sirens and flood forecasting systems made the state’s Hill Country vulnerable to deadly floods last summer. That has changed.

Known for tracking California wildfires, Watch Duty is moving beyond that mission. Millions of people are turning to it for help.

© Joel Angel Juarez/Associated Press

A lack of sirens and flood forecasting systems made the state’s Hill Country vulnerable to deadly floods last summer. That has changed.

© Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Note-taking assistant improves AI connectivity, prompting, and resources. ($289 new, free update, 37.6 MB, macOS 11+)

The Space Development Agency was established in 2019 to help speed up the deployment of US military space systems by sidestepping the Pentagon's traditional sluggish bureaucracy.

Seven years later, SDA is finally launching its first batches of operational satellites, just as the Pentagon plans to shutter the semi-autonomous agency and fold it back into the Space Force's procurement pipeline, newly reorganized under several program acquisition executives in a bid to streamline weapons buying.

SDA's fate is not a surprise, and lawmakers in both houses of Congress have backed the agency's closure in drafts of this year's National Defense Authorization Act.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

The recent paper, “Borehole Waters From Hole U1601C (Atlantis Massif) Provide Constraints for a Deep-Sourced Formation Water That (Could) Feed the Lost City Hydrothermal Field,” appeared in Geophysics, Geochemistry, and Geosystems on July 12, 2026.

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.

A new analysis revisits the Great Barrier Reef’s past losses of Acropora corals, showing that reef decline was not only a modern story of warming oceans. Using historical ecological records alongside climate-linked environmental data, the study links earlier episodes of Acropora mortality to shifting variability in ocean conditions—factors that can amplify heat stress even before today’s extremes fully arrive. The findings suggest that the reef’s vulnerability has deep roots, shaped by how the atmosphere and oceans interact over time.

The researchers focus on Acropora, a genus that forms structurally complex habitats and supports high biodiversity. When these branching corals die, the consequences cascade: shelter and food sources shrink, juvenile recruitment becomes harder, and reef recovery slows. Their approach connects mortality signals across time to measures of climate variability, aiming to distinguish natural swings from persistent human-driven pressures.

Clues come from patterns consistent with stress events driven by warmer-than-usual water, altered temperature dynamics, and changing conditions that influence coral physiology. Importantly, the work frames these stressors as interacting rather than acting alone. Climate variability can raise the frequency and severity of harmful conditions, while human impacts provide chronic background stress that reduces coral resilience.

The study emphasizes that anthropogenic impacts—such as local water-quality degradation and other human pressures—can intensify the damage caused during climate-driven heat or disturbance events. In this view, the reef does not simply “survive” or “collapse” based on temperature alone; it fails when multiple stressors converge, tipping corals past thresholds for survival and regrowth.

This “multi-stressor” model matters for forecasts. If past mortality aligns with periods of heightened climate variability, then future reef risk depends not only on long-term warming trends but also on how variability evolves. That means management strategies must be tuned to both the climate signal and the local pressures that determine how quickly corals can bounce back after shocks.

The authors also highlight that historical mortality patterns can function like a preview of likely future dynamics. Instead of treating recent bleaching as the first chapter, the analysis portrays a longer timeline of stress accumulation. The reef’s trajectory, they argue, reflects a system that has repeatedly been strained and partially recovered—until cumulative impacts made recovery less complete.

With the Great Barrier Reef facing intensifying marine heatwaves, this work adds urgency to climate mitigation and local conservation. It suggests that reducing human pressures can buy time by strengthening coral tolerance, even as global temperatures continue to rise. In viral science terms, the message is clear: the reef’s past predicts its future—and human actions can still change the ending.

Subject of Research: Great Barrier Reef coral (Acropora) mortality
Article Title: Past Acropora mortality on the Great Barrier Reef linked to climate variability and anthropogenic impacts.
Article References: Clark, T.R., Leonard, N.D., Jupiter, S.D. et al. (2026). Commun Earth Environ. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03800-9
Image Credits: AI Generated
DOI: 10.1038/s43247-026-03800-9

New navigation satellites in low-Earth orbit could provide 100 times stronger signal strength compared to GPS and other global navigation satellite systems operating from higher orbital altitudes—enabling greater location accuracy within dense cities, under thick foliage, and even inside buildings. Such signals would also likely prove more resilient to interference at a time when commercial flights, maritime shipping, and even various smartphone apps face increasingly widespread disruption from GPS jamming.

That vision may start to take shape when the first six production satellites of California-based Xona Space Systems are scheduled to launch in October 2026, with early service starting in 2027. Once the full constellation of 258 Pulsar satellites has been launched in the following years, Xona claims that customers will be able to accurately pinpoint their locations anywhere on Earth to within several centimeters.

“That added power means that we can get into that indoor environment that GPS can't get to today,” Adrien Perkins, co-founder and VP of engineering at Xona Space Systems, told Ars. “Our higher power allows you to get into those jamming environments a lot further than you would with GPS by itself.”

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New navigation satellites in low-Earth orbit could provide 100 times stronger signal strength compared to GPS and other global navigation satellite systems operating from higher orbital altitudes—enabling greater location accuracy within dense cities, under thick foliage, and even inside buildings. Such signals would also likely prove more resilient to interference at a time when commercial flights, maritime shipping, and even various smartphone apps face increasingly widespread disruption from GPS jamming.

That vision may start to take shape when the first six production satellites of California-based Xona Space Systems are scheduled to launch in October 2026, with early service starting in 2027. Once the full constellation of 258 Pulsar satellites has been launched in the following years, Xona claims that customers will be able to accurately pinpoint their locations anywhere on Earth to within several centimeters.

“That added power means that we can get into that indoor environment that GPS can't get to today,” Adrien Perkins, co-founder and VP of engineering at Xona Space Systems, told Ars. “Our higher power allows you to get into those jamming environments a lot further than you would with GPS by itself.”

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