The best evidence for exoplanet magnetic fields ever discovered has emerged from new European research, which measured wind speeds on seven ultra-hot Jupiters using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) and the Gemini North telescope.

In a recent paper published in Nature Astronomy, the team suggests that magnetic fields are most likely driving the winds, enabling the first measurements of exoplanet magnetism.

Ultra-hot Jupiters are a class of exoplanets similar in size and composition to Jupiter in our solar system, yet orbiting much closer to their host stars, resulting in surface temperatures above 2000°K.

“This breakthrough opens a completely new window on exoplanet research,” said lead author Julia Seidel, an astronomer at the Laboratoire Lagrange, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, France.

“It’s the first time we can compare the magnetic environments of other worlds,” Seidel added, calling it “a key step toward ultimately understanding which planets can stay alive, keep their water, and perhaps even, one day, host life as we know it.”

Exoplanet Magnetic Fields

On Earth, magnetism is one of the primary influences on our atmosphere and is essential to maintaining habitability. Other planets in our solar system, like Jupiter and Saturn, have strong magnetic fields, while Mars has only small, weak pockets of magnetism rather than a powerful global field.

“Radio astronomy has been trying to find the direct signals of exoplanet magnetic fields for the past 15 years, but due to technical and geometrical limitations, they have not yet been successful,” Seidel told The Debrief, noting past works by Phillip Zarka and collaborators, who she said have “led a gargantuan effort in that direction.”

“But thus far, the tentative claims could not be confirmed,” Seidel added.

“In our work, we use an indirect method, via the wind speed measurement, to infer the characteristics of the magnetic field,” Seidel continued. “So it’s not a direct method, so not as robust, but it’s the first clear indication that planets outside of the solar system have a magnetic field at all!”

Strange Exoplanet Winds

Like some of science’s most spectacular advancements, the team set out looking for something else entirely: exoplanet wind speeds. The exoplanets observed in the team’s work are all tidally locked, meaning that one side always faces toward their star, while the other faces away.

Each ultra-hot Jupiter that the team observed orbits on a different side, yet all have tremendous dayside temperatures and frigid nightsides.

Exoplanets with such extreme temperature differences between hemispheres generate weather patterns that differ greatly from those seen on Earth. When air pockets with very different temperatures meet, they produce winds. These radical differences between the two sides produce a range of wind speeds from 7200 to 25000 kilometers per hour, compared to the relatively slow 1500 kilometers per hour of our local Jupiter.

“In the beginning, we set out to check if the atmospheric winds behaved the same way for all hot planets,” Seidel said.

A strange pattern emerged from the data, as the team identified that the hottest parts of the planet had slower winds, defying expectations.

“This is totally counterintuitive because, all things being equal, hot planets have more energy to accelerate the winds! Something must happen that slows down the wind speeds for hotter objects,” said co-author Vivien Parmentier, a professor at the Laboratoire Lagrange.

A Magnetic Explanation

To explain these anomalies, the researchers proposed that powerful global magnetic fields were serving as a brake on the charged particles that make up the winds. They were able to extrapolate each exoplanet’s magnetic field strength from the wind speed data.

Results of the work indicate these magnetic fields are relatively close to what has been found in our solar system, roughly half the strength of Jupiter’s and four times that of Saturn. An unusual added effect of these magnetic fields is that they likely produce much more dramatic auroras than those seen on Earth, moving the gases that produce such vivid lights.

“I like to imagine that some of these worlds have a sky filled not only with stars, but with vast curtains of colourful light dancing across a planet that’s half in perpetual day and half in endless night,” explained co-author Bibiana Prinoth, a former PhD student at Lund University, Sweden, now an astronomer at ESO in Garching, Germany.

The team has already identified the direction of their follow-up research.

“The next step is clear: Until what planetary temperature do magnetic fields dominate how atmospheres flow and at which temperature do these winds behave more similar than in the solar system?,” Seidel said.

“For that, we are planning an observational survey to look at less hot planets and see when the trend depending on the ionisation of the atmosphere (and therefore the magnetic field) breaks.”

The paper, “Magnetic Field Strengths of Hot Giant Exoplanets Consistent with Solar System Values,” appeared in Nature Astronomy on June 2, 2026.

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 dusty rings of newborn planets may hold the key to uncovering their mass, according to a team of researchers from the University of Warwick, MIT, and McMaster University, who are finally characterizing these previously obscured celestial objects.

In a recent paper published in The Astrophysical Journal, the team reveals their novel method for extrapolating a newborn planet’s mass from measurements of the dusty rings surrounding its host star, which prevent direct observation of the planet.

These rings, known as protoplanetary disks, serve as breeding grounds for worlds, with their material eventually coalescing from dust into entire planets.

Observing Protoplanetary Disks

Advancements in observational technologies, such as the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, have allowed astronomers to take a closer look at protoplanetary disks, the rings of dust and gas that make up a host star’s planet-forming region. In those more detailed observations, astronomers have identified that these large disks are comprised of distinct ring structures.

Researchers have suspected that these separate rings reveal something about the newborn planets already orbiting within the protoplanetary disk, yet have been unable to devise a method to interpret what they are seeing.

“These bright rings are not just beautiful structures – they are essentially planetary fingerprints,” said lead author Amena Faruqi, PhD student, Astronomy and Astrophysics Group, University of Warwick. “We’ve long understood that the rings could be created from concentrated dust that piles up just beyond the orbit of young, embedded planets, but we’ve been so far unable to link features of these rings to planet masses.”

“By reading ‘between the rings,’ we have now found a way to reconstruct the masses of the planets that create the rings, even when those planets are too faint or too embedded to observe directly,” Faruqi added.

Modeling Newborn Planets

The international team developed intricate computer simulations to model how varying planetary masses would influence the shape of dust rings within the protoplanetary disk. Analysis of the model revealed three essential clues in the rings for characterizing the planet that shaped it: the width, the amount of dust, and the brightest point. 

In particular, the brightest point in the ring held special significance, directly related to the planet’s mass and unaffected by external factors such as dust grain size or observational wavelength. According to the team, with just this one factor, researchers can identify the mass of a newborn planet obscured by a dusty disk, even without knowledge of the disk’s specific conditions.

As a control, the team looked to one of the only systems whose planets have been directly imaged within their disk, PDS 70. Using their new technique based on the brightest point of five disks, the researchers arrived at a mass figure extremely close to those achieved in other mass estimates.

“One of the strengths of this work is that it doesn’t stay in the realm of theory—we’ve been able to take these simulation results and apply them directly to real observed systems,” said co-author Dr. Jessica Speedie, 51 Pegasi b Postdoctoral Fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Using the PDS 70 system as an observational laboratory in particular enabled a real verification of the approach, giving us confidence that these methods are genuinely ready to be applied widely as soon as possible.”

What Hides in Protoplanetary Disks

The team says their research lays the groundwork for identifying planets within disks in the future, either confirming suspected ones or revealing entirely new surprises, potentially even offering new insights into how our own Solar System formed.

“Another striking result of the simulations is that, in typical discs, more massive forming planets can trap as much as 20 times the mass of Earth of dust within these rings,” said senior co-author Professor Emeritus Ralph Pudritz, Department of Physics and Astronomy, McMaster University. “This confirms ALMA observations – but raises the question of why new planets have not been detected in the trapped dust and pebbles of the ring.”

Since these rings contain sufficient dust to initiate planet formation, the absence of any such formation within them will be an important focus of observations and astronomical theories moving forward.

“This work gives observers a new practical toolkit for connecting what we see in dust rings directly to the masses of the planets creating them,” concluded senior co-author Dr. Farzana Meru, Reader, Department of Physics, University of Warwick. “What excites me most is the timing. With ALMA delivering increasingly detailed disk images, and future facilities on the horizon, there has never been a better moment to develop these methods.”

The paper, “Reading between the Rings: Observed Dust Ring Properties as Probes of Planet Masses,” appeared in The Astrophysical Journal on May 28, 2026.

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.

Breaking the tiny bounds of quantum mechanics, researchers at the Southern University of Science and Technology and the Quantum Science Center of the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area have created a massive Schrödinger cat particle under ultracold conditions, reaching nearly absolute zero.

In quantum mechanics, particles can exist in a superposition of uncertainty, only existing in a certain position once they are measured, most famously illustrated by Schrödinger’s cat, an example in which the condition of a cat inside a box cannot be known until opening it.

Now, in a recent paper published in Nature Physics, the team revealed how they developed a seven-atom cluster that, when passing through a barrier higher than its own kinetic energy, entered a superposition state on a new scale.

Quantum Superposition

When an object enters a quantum superposition, it theoretically occupies multiple points of space at once, with its precise location unsure until measurement occurs. Typically, this is relegated to extremely tiny sub-atomic systems. Yet in their new research, the Hong Kong and Chinese team produced quantum tunneling in a larger system, which could be a major boon to the development of quantum sensors at a larger scale.

In addition to spatial quantum superposition, the team identified quantum tunneling as the other core concept in their recent work. A particle’s ability to quantum tunnel, which references its ability to cross a solid or energy barrier that would typically be impenetrable based on classical physics, declines with mass.

The researchers wondered whether there was a way around this, allowing macroscopic objects to undergo quantum tunneling. Typically, quantum tunneling occurs at the subatomic scale, perhaps a single atom at most, yet the team sought to move several atoms joined together through a quantum tunnel in their new work. 

Quantum Activity at Large Scale

For their large-scale quantum tunneler, the team built a mass system on an optical lattice by cooling the atoms to near absolute zero and trapping them with laser beams. Many quantum technologies, such as quantum computers, require extremely low temperatures, as cooling atoms to this degree enhances their quantum properties.

While the added mass complicates quantum tunneling due to inefficiency, creating a superposition in such a relatively large object could have fascinating repercussions for fundamental physics, especially in the poorly understood relationship of quantum mechanics and gravity.

The key to the team’s success was using a relatively weak bond between atoms rather than the tighter bonds typically used, allowing them to exploit the object to achieve a tunneling strength closer to that of a single atom.

With this new method, the team has developed a highly scalable process that is theoretically capable of achieving the same results with about 100 atoms. Further work to confirm their results could lead to the generation and detection of even larger spatial quantum superpositions.

Future Applications

The work may enable future researchers to investigate quantum effects at even larger scales and facilitate the development of quantum sensors and measurement devices. Additionally, atomic interferometry, which measures motion, gravity, time, and more based on the atom’s wave-like behaviors, could benefit from the technique by pushing it past the normal quantum limit.

This could be especially useful in investigating the weak relationship between gravity and mass, which is hard to detect at very small scales.

In the near future, the researchers have identified specific elements of their work that they will continue to pursue. Their success with the experiment also enabled the team to observe peculiar quantum phenomena, such as long-lived, strongly interacting states and many-body interactions, which they hope to investigate further.

Moving forward, they also aim to push beyond the current theoretical limit of 100 atoms in their work to several hundred atoms.

The paper, “Scalable Generation of Massive Schrödinger Cat States Via Quantum Tunnelling,” appeared in Nature Physics on May 11, 2026.

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.

Mosquitoes may have surprisingly overcome one of humanity’s best defenses against them, coming to associate the smell of DEET with a nearby meal, an international team of researchers says.

In a recent paper published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, the researchers identified that repeated exposure reduced DEET’s repellent effect on mosquitoes. However, their findings don’t end there; the team also discovered that under certain conditions, DEET may actually begin to attract mosquitoes rather than repel them, offering a strange glimpse into nature’s adaptive qualities.

DEET and Mosquitoes

DEET, the common name for diethyltoluamide, is a clear or slightly yellow liquid used to ward off insects, such as ticks, fleas, and mosquitoes. It has been used by the US military since 1949 and by civilians since 1957.

Claudio Lazzari of France’s University of Tours and Clément Vinauger of Virginia Tech led the international study, rooted in Ivan Pavlov’s famous 1890 study of conditioning, in which he noted that any indication that a dog was about to be fed, such as the ringing of a bell, would cause it to salivate, even without the sight of food. 

Yellow fever mosquitoes (Aedes aegypti) were the subjects of the team’s research. This particular species is known to infect millions of humans with deadly diseases such as dengue fever, Zika, yellow fever, and chikungunya every year. 

Feeding Them Blood

Since the insects feed on blood, the team first tested their attraction by placing a bag of warm blood on the other side of a fabric mesh restraining the mosquitoes, to observe how much effort the creatures would expend attempting to stab through to the meal. They found that insects were extremely enthusiastic, yet backed off when the smell of DEET was introduced.

They next devised an experiment to see if that could produce Pavlovian conditioning in the mosquitoes, getting them to associate the smell of DEET with feeding time. In a remarkably short time, the researchers observed a positive result. They began the experiment with 30-second feeding periods, during which the last 10 seconds introduced DEET. After a mere four repetitions of this tactic, the team found that 60% of the mosquitoes attempted to feed solely in response to the smell of DEET. 

Lending further confirmation to the finding, the team offered one of their colleagues, Ayelén Nally, from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, a free meal to the insects. One of Nally’s hands was sprayed with DEET, while the other was clean. Surprisingly, the mosquitoes showed a strong preference for the DEET-covered hand over the clean one, once they had been conditioned to associate the scent with food.

DEET Remains Useful

The team repeated the process, next training the mosquitoes to associate DEET with receiving a sugary treat, producing the same effect. The team says their findings indicate that, in the right scenario, DEET may shift from a repellent to an attractant for pests. 

“If a mosquito bites someone who applied DEET to their skin several hours earlier and the concentration of the repellent is too low to repel the mosquito,” Lazzari said, “but still strong enough for the insect to smell it, the mosquito may be more likely to bite people who smell of DEET.”

The researchers say that their work is only the beginning of efforts to better understand how insect repellents work, demonstrating that learned behavior may play a role. Despite their findings, they note that DEET generally works and saves lives by reducing insect-borne illnesses.

“If someone applies DEET and the concentration fades over time, but a mosquito still manages to feed, the insect may begin associating that smell with a reward,” Vinauger concluded. “That’s a possibility we should take seriously when we think about how repellents are used in the real world.”

The paper, “Associative Learning Switches DEET Valence from Aversive to Appetitive in Aedes Aegypti,” appeared in The Journal of Experimental Biology on May 28, 2026.

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 twist on gravity measurement, hidden in a mysterious envelope, may point to a subtle flaw in our understanding of the universe, raising new questions about its underlying forces.

That envelope held the key to an experiment led by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) physicist Stephan Schlamminger, which attempted to confirm a measurement of the universal gravitational constant made by a French team in 2007.

Working based on the previous team’s processes, Schlamminger made an important discovery that deepens our understanding of the fundamental force of gravity, as revealed in a recent paper published in Metrologia.

The Universal Gravitational Constant

Of the four forces that govern the universe, gravity, electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force, gravity has remained the most elusive to clearly understand. The problem is that it is incredibly weak compared to the other three, making precise measurements difficult. 

An easy example of this disparity is that even a small magnet, small enough to fit in the hand, can overcome the gravitational pull of the entire mass of the Earth, despite the extreme disparity in size. Despite its weakness, gravity is the force that binds our universe together, forming galaxies and holding moons in their orbits around planets, and those planets in orbit around their host stars.

A challenge scientists have pursued for over two centuries is measuring the universal gravitational constant, also known as big G, the fundamental strength of gravity throughout the universe. Schlamminger dedicated a decade to his pursuit of the universal gravity constant problem. 

Gravity in the Lab

While we can obviously notice the effect of gravity at the scale of our planet’s effect on our bodies, when considering objects small enough to be manipulated and measured inside a laboratory, the strength of gravity is so faint as to be almost imperceptible. 

Scientists have devised various methods using extremely precise equipment to measure the universal gravitational constant, but their results have failed to align. The most intriguing part is that the differences extend beyond the expected room for error in the precision instruments employed, suggesting that physicists’ basic understanding of gravity may be in error.

To investigate these errors, Schlamminger spent a decade leading an effort to recreate a 2007 experiment conducted by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) in France. If Schlamminger could confirm that finding, it would suggest that physicists may finally have a handle on gravity; otherwise, it could indicate some serious fundamental issue in their understanding.

Ensuring Objectivity

The primary concern for Schlamminger was maintaining the work’s integrity, even in the face of any subconscious bias he may hold. To do so, he had a colleague subtract a number from the data and record it in an envelope to be opened later. Only at the end of the project, with all of the work completed, would the figures be adjusted by the mystery number, ensuring that the data would not be forced to fit the previous outcome.

In 2022, Schlamminger came very close to opening the envelope before suddenly identifying one factor that had gone unaccounted for in his experiment, and adding another two years to the work. Finally, in 2024, he spent the envelope and was pleasantly surprised to see a large negative number, something in the ballpark of what would put his work in agreement with the 2007 findings after the adjustments were made.

However, after the adjustments were made, the mystery number was slightly too large, resulting in a 0.0235% difference from the French measurement.

“At face value, we learned that the new measurement at NIST and the previous measurement at BIPM do not agree with each other,” Schlamminger told The Debrief. “That gives us some idea on the reproducibility of the experiment(s). Since this was the very first time that a big G experiment was repeated, that is significant and new information.”

Continuing to Explore Gravity

“While at NIST, we found a brand-new effect that was never described in the literature before. It is a spurious torque that is mediated by a tiny temperature gradient and the residual gas in the vacuum chamber. It is unclear how much that effect may have biased the BIPM result, because we know little about the temperature gradients in that lab or their vacuum pressure,” Schlaminger continued. “Based on some estimates that I made, it seems unlikely that it accounts for the complete difference. But this effect is definitely something that was not accounted for in their uncertainty budget.”

In conversation with The Debrief, Schlamminger noted the bittersweet nature of repeating an existing experiment and ruminated on how he would advise the next generation to pursue the problem. While pointing out that repeating an experiment can be a learning experience, it remains beholden to ideas that may be outdated. 

He specifically called attention to the cumbersome coordinate measurement machine used in the work, saying that a pendulum design created by University of Washington researchers in the early 2000s would have been much more practical. His primary advice to future scientists is to scour the literature for anything that may be useful, but also to think outside the box to push the envelope even further. 

“Lincoln famously said: Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe,” Schlaminger concludes. “So analogous: Give me six years to measure G, and I will spend the first four thinking about the best way.”

The paper, “Redetermination of the Gravitational Constant with the BIPM Torsion Balance at NIST,” appeared in Metrologia on April 16, 2026.

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 Sun is experiencing long-term changes, as revealed by an international team of researchers led by the University of Birmingham, who have identified a major squeeze in the four most recent solar activity cycles.

A recent paper in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society by the University of Birmingham-led team reveals that Solar magnetic activity is now being forced into a shallow layer of the Sun, just beneath the solar surface, marking a major change to our host star’s active biorhythm.

The Sun’s 11-year cycles of activity range from a low ebb to robust periods, producing explosive events such as highly charged particle ejections and coronal mass ejections, which are major drivers of dangerous space weather.

Inside the Sun

Below the solar surface, processes generate the Sun’s magnetic field, which drives the solar cycles, which in turn drive space weather. Space weather can be extremely hazardous to the electronic and communications infrastructure we rely on, both in space and on Earth’s surface, including GPS systems and the power grid. Therefore, as our reliance on that infrastructure grows, accurately predicting space weather has become an increasingly important concern.

Scientists have primarily used external markers, such as sunspots, to track solar activity, but, like in any system, much of what drives the Sun occurs beneath the surface. To pierce the solar veil, the researchers have adopted a technique called helioseismology, which allows them to listen to small sound waves from inside the Sun. These waves reveal minute changes beneath the surface, providing a very different understanding of the most recent solar cycles than what could be observed from external markers.

A History of the Sun

The research relied on nearly four decades of helioseismic data collected by the Birmingham Solar Oscillations Network (BiSON) of six telescopes located around the globe. Finally, researchers had sufficient historical data on the Sun’s inner workings to conduct a lengthy study of how these workings have changed over time.

In their analysis of that data, the international team identified a slow but growing change in the structure of the Sun’s interior, occurring across multiple cycles.

“The Sun has its own ‘active biorhythm’ creating rising and falling magnetic activity that shapes space weather,” said lead author Professor Bill Chaplin, from the University of Birmingham. “However, traditional surface measures don’t capture the full story – that the Sun may be entering a different mode of behavior unfolding over decades.”

“We have uncovered evidence of systematic changes in the solar activity cycle,” Chaplin added. “Crucially, magnetic activity is becoming more tightly confined near the surface with each cycle. This is the first such discovery and would have been impossible without the long BiSON observations.”

A Deeper Look

From 1987 through 2025, during cycles 22-25, shifts in p-mode oscillations driven by magnetic activity revealed internal changes in the Sun. The team identified three different groups of oscillations, marked by the low, medium, and high-frequency bands, each penetrating the solar surface to a different depth. Compared with traditional external markers, the data revealed three unique elements. 

Since cycle 23, oscillation frequencies and external markers have begun telling very different stories, indicating major changes in the Sun’s internal workings. As time goes on, more and more of the changes are occurring near the surface, at depths of less than 1,000 kilometers. In the most recent cycle, 25, helioseismic data are giving off much stronger indications of this activity than surface markers.

According to the researchers, weakening magnetic fields cannot account for the changes observed, suggesting a major structural reorganization beneath the Sun’s surface. 

The team says that continuing exploitation of the BiSON data into cycle 26 will be essential to determining whether this indicates a sustained change in solar activity. 

The paper, “Sub-Surface Structural Changes Associated with Successive 11-yr Solar Activity Cycles Have Been Progressively More Confined Near the Surface: New Helioseismic Results on Cycles 22– 25 from BiSON,” appeared in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on May 28, 2026.

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.

NASA researchers have captured the longest solar radio emission ever observed, exceeding the previous record by almost four times, in a surprising discovery made possible by a groundbreaking new technique.

The event occurred in August 2025 and at first appeared to be nothing out of the ordinary. However, things took a strange turn when the signal surpassed the previous five-day solar radio emission duration record, continuing for 19 days.

Most solar radio emissions cease after just a few hours, although a good number may continue for several days, making the long duration of this event highly unusual. The findings were revealed in a recent paper in the journal Metrologia, which also showcases the new method researchers used, and its applications for exploiting a single data stream to uncover information that usually requires triangulation.

NASA Captures A Strange Emission

Solar radio emissions were first discovered accidentally during World War II after they interfered with British radar systems. Because the phenomenon was considered sensitive to the war effort, it did not appear in scientific literature until 1946, although an independent observation published in 1944 described the signals as “cosmic static.” Since then, astronomers have closely monitored solar radio emissions.

The seemingly innocuous emission first appeared on August 21, 2025, and continued until September 9, 2025. NASA researchers identified the event as a Type IV emission, generated by electrons trapped within solar magnetic fields. These emissions are generally benign and do not produce the kinds of interference that can threaten near-Earth satellites or ground-based electrical infrastructure during more severe solar storms.

Analyzing a Solar Radio Emission

Data for the team’s analysis came from several NASA platforms, including the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO), the Parker Solar Probe, the Wind mission, and the Solar Orbiter, a European Space Agency collaboration.

No single instrument captured the entire event; instead, each spacecraft observed portions of the unusually long-lasting emission from different vantage points throughout the inner solar system.

Solar Orbiter was the first spacecraft to detect the activity, followed 12 days later by Wind and the Parker Solar Probe, and finally by STEREO one day afterward. Because the event persisted for so long, it passed through several optimal viewing geometries, providing researchers with an unusually rich dataset.

One advancement stemming from the research was the development of a new technique by the NASA team for identifying the source of a radio emission using STEREO data, called the wavevector-corrected ray sphere (WCRS). By applying a correction to direction-finding angles and combining the data with a coronal density model, WCRS allows researchers to perform advanced analysis from only a single data source.

NASA Continues to Probe Solar Activity

WCRS allowed the researchers to key in on a helmet streamer, a type of large magnetic feature residing in the solar atmosphere. The NASA team currently theorizes that coronal mass ejections, a volatile type of solar event known to send harmful waves of space weather toward Earth, likely fueled this intriguing yet significantly less dangerous event.

Three successive coronal mass ejections likely supplied the electrons needed to power the stream.

Researchers believe the new technique could help improve space weather forecasting, an increasingly important concern as modern society becomes more dependent on satellites and communications infrastructure. The method may also enhance scientists’ ability to identify and analyze future radio emissions from the Sun.

The paper, “Unprecedented 19 Day Type IV Radio Emission as a Corotating Electron Reservoir,” appeared in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on May 14, 2026.

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.

NASA has unveiled a wide range of Moon Base developments as its Artemis program seeks not only to return humans to the Moon, but also to establish permanent infrastructure there.

Among the disclosures was new information about crewed and autonomous lunar rovers, timeframes, and a lunar South Pole exploration mission in preparation for crewed landings. Together, these Moon Base missions will lay the groundwork for humanity’s permanent presence on the lunar surface.

“The Moon Base will be America’s and humanity’s first outpost on another celestial world,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. “Every mission, crewed and uncrewed, will be a learning opportunity as we return to the lunar surface, build the infrastructure to stay, and master the skills required to live and operate in one of the most demanding and dangerous environments imaginable.”

Moon Base Missions

During the presentation, NASA clarified its plans by announcing three missions designed to help establish the foundation for a permanent Moon Base, all of which are scheduled to launch this year. The agency also hinted that these three missions are only the beginning, with more than a dozen additional announcements expected later this year.

The Moon Base I mission could launch as early as this fall, using Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 Endurance lander to deliver two instruments to the lunar surface to aid future landings. These include the Laser Retroreflective Array, which will allow spacecraft to precisely laser-target landing sites, and the Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies instrument, which will provide detailed data on how lander thrusters interact with lunar regolith.

Improving the predictability of landings and takeoffs will be essential for safety as the lunar surface becomes increasingly populated with permanent infrastructure.

Also planned for this year is the Moon Base II mission, which will carry another 1,100 pounds of cargo, highlighted by Astrolab’s FLIP rover, designed to test lunar mobility technologies for a future crewed lunar terrain vehicle. Finally, Moon Base III will deliver the Lunar Vertex rover, designed to study the Moon’s magnetic anomalies, along with payloads from the European Space Agency and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute.

Lunar Vehicles

NASA says that establishing reliable surface mobility during the earliest stages of the Moon Base effort will be critical to long-term success. With Astrolab’s FLIP rover already testing lunar mobility technologies, it is no surprise that NASA has also awarded contracts to both Astrolab and Lunar Outpost to develop the first Lunar Terrain Vehicles (LTVs). NASA is currently targeting 2028 for its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative to place both crewed and uncrewed LTVs on the lunar surface.

Building on its work with the FLEX rover, Astrolab is already deep into development of its Crewed Lunar Vehicle, CLV-1, which is expected to support 2,000 pounds of mass and reach speeds of up to 6 mph on the lunar surface under optimal conditions.

Lunar Outpost’s competing vehicle, Pegasus, is expected to reach speeds of up to 9 mph and support manual, autonomous, or remote operation. Both companies are expected to finalize and test their lunar vehicles by the end of 2027.

Making Moon Base a Reality

Many different components will need to come together for the Moon Base initiative to succeed. In addition to the mission and vehicle announcements, NASA also discussed several smaller supporting projects. The planned 2028 Moon Fall mission, for example, will scout potential landing sites using a team of four drones designed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. NASA also said additional announcements regarding private-sector contracts tied to the Moon Base initiative are expected soon.

“We will go for the science, for all we stand to gain from an economic and technological perspective, for the innovations that will make life better here on Earth, and to prepare for where we will inevitably go next,” Isaacman concluded. “We are grateful for President Trump’s leadership, the bipartisan commitment from Congress, our industry and international partners, and the dedicated NASA workforce whose expertise enables us to achieve the near-impossible.”

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.

James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) research, supported by Hubble Space Telescope (HST) data, is revealing exciting new information about star and planet formation from observations of four nearby galaxies.

In these galaxies, researchers observed thousands of young stars in different clusters at various stages of evolution, according to a recent paper published in Nature Astronomy. The main takeaway from the JWST and HST research is that the more massive a star cluster is, the faster it pushes its natal gas away, allowing it to emerge from its cloud, at the expense of planet formation.

Galactic Evolution

At the heart of galactic evolution are star clusters, clouds of gas from which stars coalesce under gravitational forces. Over time, stars produce radiation, stellar winds, and supernovae that disperse these natal clouds, ending the period of star formation and leaving residual gas to drift through space. Once the gas is cleared, light from the stars can propagate more freely throughout the galaxy in a process known as stellar feedback, pushing away additional gas before it can be used to form new stars.

Astronomers have managed to observe a handful of local star-forming regions within our galaxy and nearby dwarf galaxies, but our vantage point provides only a limited view. Nearby galaxies offer better opportunities to survey star-forming regions and star clusters with the JWST and HST. By combining observations from both within and beyond our galaxy, astronomers can assemble a broader dataset that allows for deeper analyses of star formation.

JWST Peers Out at the Cosmos

Infrared instruments like those aboard the JWST have been essential for understanding star-forming clouds, allowing researchers to peer through their dense gas and dust and glimpse what lies within.

Behind that gas, some of the earliest stages of star cluster development are taking place, offering new insight into the beginnings of galaxies. One of the biggest unresolved questions has been how long it takes for a cloud to disperse, allowing the light from a star cluster to escape into the wider galaxy.

The combined observations from HST and JWST provide the broadest spectral view of young star clusters astronomers have ever obtained. The galaxies at the center of the recent study are Messier 51, Messier 83, NGC 628, and NGC 4449. After an international team of researchers analyzed images captured by the two space telescopes, they concluded that the more massive a star cluster is, the faster it clears away its gas.

9000 Clusters Before the JWST

In these galaxies, researchers identified nearly 9,000 star clusters at various evolutionary stages, ranging from fully obscured by natal gas clouds to completely cleared, with intermediate stages in between. JWST’s infrared capabilities revealed partially or fully obscured clusters, while Hubble’s visible-light instruments showed those that had already cleared their natal clouds. The timescale for dispersing natal gas clouds ranged from about five million years for the most massive clusters to as long as eight million years for less massive ones.

“Simulations of star formation and stellar feedback have struggled to reproduce how star clusters form and emerge from their natal clouds. These results give us important new constraints on that process,” explained lead author Angela Adamo of Stockholm University and the Oskar Klein Center in Sweden.

Researchers already knew that massive star clusters emitted most of a galaxy’s ultraviolet light, but the new findings also demonstrate that they begin dispersing that light earlier than smaller clusters. By tracking how stellar feedback waxes and wanes across different parts of a galaxy, researchers can better understand how it redistributes essential star-forming gas.

Ironically, the faster dispersal of natal clouds in massive clusters may undermine planet formation by exposing protoplanetary disks to ultraviolet radiation earlier, reducing their ability to capture gas needed to form planets. In this way, some of the universe’s most massive star clusters may also impose severe limitations on planet formation, a phenomenon that has also been observed in our own Milky Way.

The paper, “The Emerging Timescale of Young Star Clusters Regulated by Cluster Stellar Mass,” appeared in Nature Astronomy on May 06, 2026.

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 medical startup says it is using disembodied human brains in new drug development research targeting neurodegenerative diseases, a practice that may draw unsettling comparisons to the science fiction trope of a living brain in a jar. 

The brains of deceased donors are reportedly being used in the work by Bexorg, a Connecticut-based medical startup, building on successful attempts to restore limited function in pig brains.

A system dubbed BrainEx, a targeted life-support system for brains, is at the core of Bexorg’s work, restoring metabolic functions in donated organs and enabling extremely invasive research, albeit in a manner that has raised some ethical concerns.

Investigating the Human Brain

In their new process, Bexorg supplies recently deceased human brains with a blood substitute and other fluids that fuel metabolic processes, while anesthesia deadens their electrical activity. The artificially life-sustaining liquids, data, and drugs flow through four ports sutured into each brain, while apparatus mimicking the lungs and kidneys inject oxygen and remove waste. 

Bexborg says that the lack of neural firing in the brain, induced by the anesthetic drug propofol, means they do not experience consciousness. In a strange twilight state, the brain operates as though it were alive, allowing researchers to observe how it metabolizes experimental drugs, yet without the electrical activity that forms consciousness.

The shelf life of these brains is rather short; after only 24 hours, the researchers cut them into hundreds of pieces for a more detailed study. These investigations are targeting how ailments such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis may respond to new treatments, allowing detailed information on duration, targeting, and potential side effects.

According to Bexborg, the greatest advantage of their work is in the deep complexities of how the human brain develops over decades. The real-world effects of genetics, environmental exposures, and drug histories are difficult to capture in simulated computer models, petri dish cells, or whole-animal brains.

Bexborg Grows

While their work has only recently come to public attention, Bexborg has been working in this space for five years now. They say early results show a close match between the responses displayed by preserved examples and those of living brains.

So far, only the company’s work with pig brains has been published, with their first human brain paper forthcoming. However, according to Bexborg, recent efforts to curb animal testing may potentially be a boon to the company, offering what they see as an ethical alternative.

As part of Bexborg’s upscaling, the company says it is developing new laboratory space where a robotic arm will automatically dissect more than 1,600 preserved brains per year.

Their public relations arm was working at full steam on a public presentation this week, aimed at assuaging those who feared that the brains might still possess some form of consciousness. Bexborg did not respond to inquiries from The Debrief about exactly where the brains used in the company’s research originate. However, the company has claimed that family members are informed about how the brains will be used.

Bringing Bexborg Results to Market

The first real-world application of Bexborg’s work is coming to fruition as their collaborator, Biohaven, begins clinical trials of a drug developed using Bexborg data. Bexborg claims that their work will enable safer clinical trials, as the results will be much closer to a treatment’s effect on actual human brains than those from animal testing or simulated models.

Biohaven praised the results from testing on 130 preserved brains, noting that a dose of their drugs 20 times lower than expected yielded optimal results in human brains, thereby minimizing the time required for clinical trials and potentially alleviating major side effects that could have occurred at the higher dose.

While the company is now focused on drug testing, they say expansion into more robust disease research could be on the horizon. They also note that, since electrical activity is not a major component of neurodegenerative diseases, the BrainEx could be the ideal platform for studying these maladies.

Still, some issues exist with BrainEx, limiting it from being a perfect representation of the human body. These artificial fluids, lungs, and kidneys are not exactly he same as the human originals, and the lack of electrical activity means that potential seizure risks would go unrecognized.

In the future, Bexorg is looking to expand in two directions. The first is exploring ways to extend the longevity of their preserved brains from 24 hours to two weeks, enabling more in-depth research. The second—and perhaps at odds with the company’s focus on the human brain—is NeuroLens, a machine-learning model for simulated drug testing.

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.

Signs of extraterrestrial life may have been ignored by researchers for decades, say a team of astrobiologists, warning of the potential pitfalls of false negatives in the search for ET.

In a recent paper in Nature Astronomy, researchers at Utrecht University argue that poorly designed tests for life elsewhere in the cosmos are a great waste of science funding.

Astrobiology is a specialized field dedicated to discovering the origins of life and detecting life on other planets, yet it remains ambiguous in its conclusions.

False Extraterrestrial Signals

“We should be aware of these false-negative results,” says lead author Inge Loes ten Kate, professor in astrobiology at Utrecht University and the University of Amsterdam. “It means there are shortcomings in recognizing the existence of life. These shortcomings are not yet high on the research agenda.”

The researchers argue that while false positives are well considered in the astrobiology field, potential false negatives, in which existing extraterrestrial life may not appear present, are largely overlooked, to the detriment of the field.

The researchers identified three primary reasons why the search for extraterrestrial life may lead to false negatives. The first is that ancient life on distant worlds may not have been preserved, leaving no remnants left to uncover, even if something once lived. The second two are related; the signals of life on some world may be extremely faint, and our current level of technology may not be advanced enough to detect them. 

“There are several life-detection instrument concepts in development for Mars and even for icy moons that so far have not yet been selected for a mission that I would love to see fly,” Professor ten Kate told The Debrief. “Even though we will always run the risk that those instruments will not find life, whether it is there or not.”

Targeting the Extraterrestrial

“We therefore advocate for the development of a targeted research strategy that systematically addresses these risks, in which we must combine laboratory experiments with modeling research and fieldwork,” ten Kate explained. “Space missions and instruments are designed to detect potential signs of life, but the risk of overlooking something is not taken into account.” 

“The search for signs of life should go hand in hand with better-defined questions and testable hypotheses to justify specific measurement or observation targets,” ten Kate continued.

The researchers favor using artificial intelligence tools to recognize patterns in extraterritorial data, which might identify elements missed by the human eye, and then apply them to future observations. They also note that failing to identify evidence of life may lead to long-term mistakes, such as dismissing objectives and instruments too hastily. They compare this to a person looking at a rock from above, unaware that bugs live beneath it, and, down the line, resource extraction could destroy the rock and the bugs with it.

Possibilities for Life Elsewhere

The Utrecht researchers say that much work remains to be done theorizing what sort of life may exist in the cosmos, what types of environments that life could persist in, and what external signals it should produce. A recent example the team is interested in is an unusual oxidation noted in a Martian rock last year, which bore intriguing similarities to finds on Earth, the only planet known to harbor life.

“On Earth, we only see such differing oxidation as a result of the presence of life,” ten Kate said. “But does that necessarily mean that we are dealing with life in an extraterrestrial context?”

The team says that to better understand this promising Martian discovery, astrobiologists will have to refine their understanding of geochemistry in an extraterrestrial environment before sending a crewed mission to investigate the Red Planet.

If there were life, and it were hidden, ten Kate argues, “there would be a high likelihood of the crew unknowingly killing that Martian life.”

“Although this hypothetical Martian life might ‘only’ be unicellular, like bacteria, in my opinion, we do not have the right to kill it, not even accidentally,” ten Kate concluded. “This is, of course, an ethical dilemma, and I know not everybody would agree.”

The paper, “False Negatives in the Search for Extraterrestrial Life,” appeared in Nature Astronomy on May 21, 2026.

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.

James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) data are allowing researchers to resolve a gas giant’s cloud cover, providing a new level of detail that significantly alters our understanding of exoplanet conditions.

A tidally locked hot Jupiter, WASP-94A b, was the focus of the JWST for these observations, which captured a much more dynamic atmosphere than earlier simplified assumptions. In a new paper published in Science, an American team of astronomers reveals how the boundary between the planet’s permanent day and night sides creates an extreme temperature difference that dramatically affects the atmospheric chemistry.

A Hot Jupiter

The exoplanet WASP-94b is located about 700 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Microscopium. Hot Jupiters such as this intrigue scientists because their tight orbits produce incredibly intense surface temperatures, making them excellent natural laboratories for studying planetary surface dynamics.

As atmospheric aerosols travel across WASP-94A b, when they encounter the planet’s dramatic temperature shifts, they form into clouds to circulate over the exoplanet before eventually evaporating. Researchers were aware that these processes shape the appearance, chemistry, and temperature of exoplanet atmospheres, but had a limited understanding of how the exoplanet aerosol particles at their core behave.

The nature of hot Jupiter clouds was unclear, with researchers suggesting either photochemical hazes produced by stellar radiation or mineral clouds generated by condensation.

Adding to the difficulty is the tendency of these clouds to distort or obscure the spectral signals used to observe exoplanets. However, in the new work, JWST data provided strong confirmation of one of these hypotheses.

JWST Atmospheric Imaging

The JWST’s Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) instrument allowed the researchers to separately analyze WASP-94A b’s permanent morning and night atmospheric horizons. To do this, the team waited until the exoplanet passed in front of its home star, providing an opportunity to measure the light passing through the atmosphere at its edges. Their findings revealed that the two sides of the planet held extremely different atmospheres.

The cooler morning side contains high-mineral clouds that offer dense cover, while the morning side is clearer and shows high levels of water vapor absorption. These findings are consistent with condensation rather than the photochemical hypothesis. 

The team also employed a 3D circulation model to study the dynamic cloud cycle, discovering that the massive 450 Kelvin temperature disparity between the hemispheres was a driving factor, with clouds forming not on the night side but evaporating before reaching the intense temperatures of the day side.

The work reveals that the common assumption that exoplanet atmospheres are relatively uniform can lead to a gross misunderstanding of what is occurring on these distant bodies.

James Webb Space Telescope Breaks Through

“I’ve been looking at exoplanets for 20 years, and general cloudiness has been a thorn in our side,” said co-author and program PI, David Sing, a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Johns Hopkins. “We’ve known for quite a while that clouds are pervasive on Hot Jupiter planets, which is annoying because it’s like trying to look at the planet through a foggy window.”

“Not only have we been able to clear the view, but we can finally pin down what the clouds are made out of and how they’re condensing and evaporating as they move around the planet,” Sing added.

The researchers offered two possible explanations for the cloud movement: either strong winds are pushing clouds up on the night side, causing them to descend when they reach the day side, or the phenomenon could be similar to morning fog, but on a planetary scale, evaporating the day-side heat.

“It was a huge surprise. People have expected some differences, like it’s cooler in the morning than the evening—that’s something natural that we experience here on Earth,” Sing said. “But what we saw was a real dichotomy between the weather on both sides of the planet, and huge differences in cloud coverage, and that changes our whole picture of the planet.”

JWST Advances Continue

“With the Hubble telescope, when we used to do this type of observation, we got an average view of the whole planet with data from the clouds and the atmosphere squished together and indistinguishable,” said first author Sagnick Mukherjee, a postdoctoral fellow at Arizona State University who was a student at Johns Hopkins and UC Santa Cruz at the time of the research. “This approach with the JWST lets us localize our observations, which helped us see the cloud cycle.”

The team was surprised to find that the night side atmosphere resembled our local Jupiter’s sky much more than was initially expected, based on earlier data. When previously working with a simplified average planetary cloud cover, researchers arrived at figures indicating that the planet contained hundreds of times as much oxygen and carbon as Jupiter. Now, with a clearer understanding of the day/night differential, it was revealed that the planet actually contained only five times as much oxygen and carbon.

Comparing their findings with those for eight other gas giants, the team found two cognates of the same cloud-cycling mechanism: WASP-39 b and WASP-17 b. Following this work, the team is currently studying cloud cycling on multiple other types of exoplanets.

The paper, “Cloudy Mornings and Clear Evenings on a Gas Giant Exoplanet,” appeared in Science on April 27, 2026.

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.

After a Mars flyby on May 15, NASA’s Psyche spacecraft is well on its way to a 2029 rendezvous with the asteroid for which it is named, in search of evidence for how planets like ours first formed.

According to NASA‘s analysis of signals between the Psyche spacecraft and NASA’s Deep Space Network, the craft passed by Mars at a distance of less than 3,000 miles, achieving a gravity assist that boosted its speed and adjusted its orbital panel, without expending any precious propellant.

The NASA craft’s destination, the asteroid Psyche, is a metal-rich space object residing between Mars and Jupiter in the main asteroid belt and may represent some of the early building blocks of our Solar System.

NASA Confirms Mission Success

“Although we were confident in our calculations and flight plan, monitoring the DSN’s Doppler signal in real time during the flyby was still exciting,” said Don Han, Psyche’s navigation lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

“We’ve confirmed that Mars gave the spacecraft a 1,000-mile-per-hour boost and shifted its orbital plane by about 1 degree relative to the Sun. We are now on course for arrival at the asteroid Psyche in summer 2029,” Han added.

With conserving fuel and power a necessity on any space mission, Psyche’s instruments were not powered up and calibrated until mere days before its Martian flyby. Although the craft’s imagers, magnetometers, and gamma-ray and neutron spectrometers were designed to capture data on Psyche, NASA scientists were able to give them a trial run by observing Mars while on approach. 

This test allowed the instruments to observe the Red Planet at an unusual high phase angle, when it appeared as a narrow crescent illuminated by the Sun. Some of the data collected surprised the team, with the crescent (seen below) extending farther and appearing brighter than expected.

NASA Calibrates Psyche

“We’ve captured thousands of images of the approach to Mars and of the planet’s surface and atmosphere at close approach,” said Jim Bell, the Psyche imager instrument lead at Arizona State University (ASU) in Tempe.

“This dataset provides unique and important opportunities for us to calibrate and characterize the performance of the cameras, as well as test the early versions of our image processing tools being developed for use at the asteroid Psyche,” Bell added.

Bell is no stranger to NASA’s extraterrestrial missions, also leading the team working on the Perseverance Mars rover’s Mastcam-Z imaging investigation. He added that calibration efforts would continue targeting Mars for the rest of the month, until the planet was out of range.

However, the Psyche spacecraft’s magnetometer calibration tests made another intriguing discovery: the team believes it detected the planet’s bow shock, a shock wave produced by the impact of stellar winds.

Rounding out the calibration effort, previous Mars data will also provide helpful information to the team responsible for calibrating the spacecraft’s gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer.

Rendezvous with Psyche

NASA’s Psyche mission is now on its way to its final destination, which is estimated to be reached in August 2029. Its target, the 173-mile-wide asteroid Psyche, is hypothesized to be the remnant of an ancient planetary building block known as a planetesimal.

Once the craft arrives, it will assume a variable circular orbit, coming in closer and retreating to greater distances, seeking evidence of whether the asteroid contains a metallic core.

“We’ve been anticipating the Mars flyby for years, but now it’s complete. We can thank the Red Planet for giving our spacecraft a critical gravitational slingshot farther into the solar system,” said Lindy Elkins-Tanton, principal investigator for Psyche at the University of California, Berkeley.

“Onward to the asteroid Psyche!” she added.

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.

Observations by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have led to the surprising discovery that an ancient, distant galaxy is not rotating as expected, adding to our knowledge of the diverse conditions of the early universe.

The recent JWST finding was especially unusual because similar behavior has been observed only in nearby, mature, massive galaxies whose star formation slowed gradually over billions of years.

A team of researchers estimates that the galaxy XMM-VID1-2075 is not even 2 billion years old, based on the JWST observations, compared to the Milky Way’s 13.6 billion years, making its behavior highly unusual, according to their recent paper published in Nature Astronomy.

Rotating Galaxies

“This one in particular did not show any evidence of rotation, which was surprising and very interesting,” said lead author Ben Forrest, a research scientist in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Davis.

As gas flowed into early galaxies, most astronomers believe that angular momentum, combined with gravity, caused them to spin. However, over long periods of time, galaxies can lose their initial spin through mergers rather than spins canceling one another out. 

Because of this, we would expect to see this lack of spin primarily in galaxies close to Earth, as the distance light has traveled would be shorter, and therefore the light would come from older, more mature galaxies that have had the opportunity to experience such mergers. Finding a galaxy so distant, and therefore so young based on the speed of the light, is most unexpected.

James Webb Space Telescope Survey

The research was part of the MAGAZ3NE (Massive Ancient Galaxies at z>3 NEar-Infrared) survey on the JWST by researchers who had used Hawaii’s W.M. Keck observatory to observe XMM-VID1-2075 previously.

“Previous MAGAZ3NE observations had confirmed this was one of the most massive galaxies in the early universe, with already several times as many stars as our Milky Way, and also confirmed that it was no longer forming new stars, making it a compelling target for follow-up observations,” Forrest said.

Using the JWST’s advanced capabilities, the researchers compared XMM-VID1-2075 with two galaxies of similar age to measure their relative motion.

“This type of work has been done a lot with nearby galaxies because they’re closer and larger and so you can do these kinds of studies from the ground, but it’s very difficult to do with high redshift galaxies because they appear a lot smaller in the sky,” Forrest said. “(JWST) is really pushing the frontier for these kinds of studies.”

JWST DATA Reveals an Unusual Galaxy

The JWST data on the three galaxies yield a strange combination of results: one rotates as expected, another is described as “messy,” and the last does not rotate but exhibits significant random movement. While this behavior is expected of massive galaxies in our local neighborhood, the researchers were stunned to find it occurring so close to the beginning of the universe.

The team leans toward one possibility that may offer an explanation, suggesting that a kind of equilibrium was achieved when two galaxies with almost perfectly opposite rotations collided in a single event.

“For this particular galaxy, we see a large excess of light off to the side. And so that’s suggestive of some other object which has come in and is interacting with the system and potentially changing its dynamics,” Forrest said.

Continuing their work, the team will seek other early galaxies lacking spin and explore galaxy-formation simulations that could explain this behavior.

“There are some simulations that predict that there will be a very small number of these non-rotating galaxies very early in the universe, but they expect them to be quite rare,” Forrest concluded. “And so this is one way in which we can test these simulations and really figure out how common they are, and that can then give us information about whether our theories of this evolution are correct.”

The paper, “A Massive and Evolved Slow-Rotating Galaxy in the Early Universe,” appeared in Nature Astronomy on May 04, 2026.

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 mysterious weather anomaly on Venus has finally been explained in new research, providing deeper insights into the weather volatility of other planets in our solar system.

University of Tokyo researchers revealed their findings in a recent paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, focused on their investigation of a massive cloud disturbance observed on the second planet from the Sun.

This unusual cloud phenomenon involves a 6,000-kilometer-wide wave front that travels around Venus over just a few Earth days, and scientists believe it could potentially affect future space missions.

A Weather Aberration on Venus

Japan’s Akatsuki Venus orbiter first observed Venus’s enormous, 6,000-kilometer-wide atmospheric wave move across the planet’s equator at tremendous speed in 2016. Now, a decade later, the University of Tokyo team has some answers about this peculiar feature.

Compared to Earth, Venus is a slow mover, with its rotation even slower than its 243-day orbit. Despite this, Venusian clouds move at an incredible pace, 60 times the planet’s rotational speed in what is known as “superrotation,” a phenomenon also observed on Mars, the Sun, and Earth’s supersonic atmosphere.

“We identified the phenomena, but for years we couldn’t understand it,” said lead author Professor Takeshi Imamura from the Graduate School of Frontier Sciences at the University of Tokyo. “However, thanks to this research, we’re now able to show that this cloud disruption is caused by the largest known hydraulic jump in the solar system.”

A Natural Weather Lab

The Venusian atmosphere is hot, dense, and toxic, being composed of almost 97% carbon dioxide. This results in constant cloud cover, which rains sulfuric acid. While this creates a deadly environment for humans, at a distance, it’s a perfect natural weather laboratory. This extreme cloud density makes hard-to-spot weather patterns and processes more readily apparent than they would be on a planet such as ours.

The strange formation in the Venusian atmosphere resulted from a sudden slowdown of the fluid, known as a hydraulic jump, produced when a large atmospheric Kelvin wave moving east across Venus becomes unstable in the lower to middle cloud region. The Kelvin wave’s sudden slowing produces an updraft, pushing sulfuric acid vapor into the upper atmosphere, where it can condense into clouds. As though clouds trail, they form the enormous wavefront spotted by Akatsuki Venus.

“Venus has three distinct cloud layers, and the dynamics of the lower and middle layers are not so well understood,” said Imamura. “Our discovery of a hydraulic jump on Venus connecting a very large-scale horizontal process with a strong localized vertical wave is unexpected, as in fluid dynamics these are usually disconnected.”

Analyzing Venusian Weather

The Japanese researchers used a fluid-dynamic model to simulate the hydraulic jump observed on Venus, combined with a microphysical box model to track air flow through the atmosphere. In their analysis, the University of Tokyo researchers identified how the cloud disturbance maintains the Venusian atmosphere’s superrotation.

“Up until now, we used a global circulation model (GCM) for Venus that is similar to Earth’s, but this model doesn’t include the hydraulic jump which we have now identified,” explained Imamura. “Our next step will be to test this discovery within a more inclusive climate model that includes other atmospheric processes. We will face challenges due to the significant processing power required to run such simulations. Even with modern supercomputers, it isn’t easy.”

This marks the first hydraulic jump observed on another planet, but the researchers say this may be a portent of things to come as scientists get a closer look at other bodies in the universe. 

“Under some circumstances, Mars’ atmosphere may also have the right conditions for a hydraulic jump,” mentioned Imamura. 

As humanity stretches out into space with hopes of crewed Mars landings in the coming decades, advancing models of extraterrestrial atmospheric conditions will be essential to mission safety.

The paper, “A Planetary-Scale Hydraulic Jump Driving Venus’ Cloud Front,” appeared in the Journal of Geophysical Research on April 24, 2026.

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.

Martian chaos created by craters, lava, and water was observed by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express in the Shalbatana Vallis, providing an in-depth look at this fascinating feature of the Red Planet’s terrain.

This channel, close to the Martian equator, the Shalbatana Vallis, stretches between the highland Xanthe Terra and the lowland Chris Panitia, carved by natural processes long ago. Even after two decades, Mars Express continues to provide scientists with stunning new details of the Martian terrain, filling in our understanding of Earth’s planetary neighbor.

Mars Express

Since its 2003 launch, Mars Express has been exploring the Red Planet with a suite of eight onboard instruments. Consisting of a lander, Beagle 2, and the Mars Express orbiter, the spacecraft has been especially prolific, mapping the Martian surface color and three dimensions at never-before-achieved resolution over the last two decades.

An earlier Mars Express video, captured in October 2025, observed the channel from beginning to end. Yet, this new image captured by the Mars Express’s High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) focuses more tightly on a northern segment of the 1300-kilometer-long Shalbatana Vallis, providing exquisite, high-resolution detail on this intriguing surface feature.

Forging the Shalbatana Vallis

Scientists believe that, as large amounts of groundwater rose to the surface to flood this equatorial region roughly 3.5 billion years ago, that catastrophe produced the Shalbatana Vallis, cutting a winding path through the rock. The main valley cuts 500 meters deep, yet extends about 10 kilometers wide as it meanders across the Martian surface.

As weathering carved the valley, scientists believe this also filled it in over time. The precise materials that infilled the once-deep valley cannot be pinpointed, yet some clues exist. Researchers believe that a blue-black material in part of the modern channel is volcanic ash strewn about by Martian winds.

Unusual Terrain Features of Mars

Other valleys of Shalbatana Vallis’s type abound in the region, which is home to many marks of local volatility. On one side are the northern lowlands, relatively smooth, while the highlands to the south are heavily cratered from ancient space impacts. It also lies near Chris Planitia, likely an ancient ocean, based on its status as one of the lowest points on the Martian surface and the many outflow channels leading into it.

Often accompanying outflow channels, such as Shalbatana Vallis, are scattered rock mounds and raised blocks known as chaotic terrain. In this instance, a section of chaotic terrain appears in the images near the blue/black portion identified as likely volcanic ash. Such features are likely born in the collapse of the surface ground, as water ice below melts, creating instability. Mars Express has previously captured such features in the areas of Pyrrhae Regio, Iani Chaos, Ariadnes Colles, Aram Chaos, and Hydraotes Chaos.

Remnants of impact craters in the area now lie partially obscured by later burial, long-term wear, and even a covering of material ejected during the initial impact. Volcanic activity has, over time, flooded the regions with lava, smoothing many of these ancient features before cooling and shrinking into wrinkle ridges. Presently, a few isolated portions of the earlier surface still remain, now as hill tops scattered through the channel.

Going forward, with the help of software updates that occurred last year, ESA scientists are expected to keep Mars Express operational through 2034, providing ever more data ahead of any potential crewed landings on the Red Planet.

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.

Satellites are creating a massive pollution problem, according to University College London researchers, who say the growing atmospheric carbon source has a 500 times greater climate impact than ground-based emissions, potentially blocking the Sun.

In a recent paper published in the journal Earth’s Future, researchers demonstrate that satellites are driving a significant rise in upper-atmosphere pollution, raising concerns related to the ongoing climate crisis. By the end of this decade, almost half of this pollution will come from satellite megaconstellations launched since 2019, the researchers claim.

Satellite Pollution

While satellites do emit some exhaust when they engage their thrusters, this is not the primary source of pollution they produce, according to the University College London researchers.

Instead, they point to rocket launches, as they generate a massive amount of carbon soot when discarded rocket bodies and dead satellites burn up on reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere. This carbon is particularly problematic, remaining in the upper atmosphere for an extended period and generating a 500-fold climate impact compared to ground emissions.

The team also investigated other forms of launch-related pollution, noting that chlorine released into the atmosphere by these launches harms the ozone layer, which blocks harmful UV rays; however, this impact is far less severe than the carbon soot. Even projecting out to 2029, the team seems confident that rocket launches, accounting for under a tenth of ozone depletion, and some organizations, such as Blue Origin, will be conducting launches that release no chlorine at all.

This is nonetheless important to monitor, they argue, as China’s space launches typically do release chlorine and are expected to grow in the coming years.

Satellite Reentry Carbon

Data for the research were sourced from satellite deployments and rock launches conducted between 2020 and 2022, which found that circulation patterns in the upper atmosphere move very slowly, allowing soot particles to linger for extended periods. In the lower atmosphere, rain and other weather systems remove such particles from car and factory exhaust much more rapidly. With this longer atmospheric life span, each particle in the upper atmosphere has a much greater impact on the environment.

Air pollution from launches and reentry is accumulating in the atmosphere at such a rate that by the end of the decade, it could block as much sunlight as artificial geoengineering projects aimed at reducing global warming. However, the actual cooling effect produced would likely be far below the expected temperature rise due to global warming over the same period, the study authors say.

“The space industry pollution is like a small-scale, unregulated geoengineering experiment that could have many unintended and serious environmental consequences,” said Professor Eloise Marais, the project’s leader and a researcher at UCL Geography. “Currently, the impact on the atmosphere is small, so we still have the chance to act early before it becomes a more serious issue that is harder to reverse or repair. So far, there has been limited effort to effectively regulate this type of pollution.”

The Pace Quickens

Their data indicates that megaconstellations, which the team sees as a significant concern, accounted for 35% of the climate impact of these events, and they expect this to grow to 42% by the end of the decade.

Recent years have seen exponential growth in satellites in near-Earth orbit, primarily driven by the rise of megaconstellations composed of hundreds of thousands of objects. The most well-known of these, SpaceX’s Starlink, accounts for 12,000 individual satellites. Megaconstellations are now consuming over half of the rocket fuel expended, as launches rose from just 114 a year in 2020 to 329 in 2025.

The researchers note that real-world megaconstellation launches between 2023 and 2025 have outpaced their projections based on 2020 to 2022 data, suggesting their predictions may actually underestimate the scale of the problem.

“The cooling effect from the reduction in sunlight that we calculate with our models may sound like a welcome change against the backdrop of global warming, but we need to be extremely cautious,” Professor Marais warned.

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

“Though this soot’s impact on climate is currently much smaller than other industrial sources, its potency means we need to act before it causes irreparable harm,” Barker says.

The paper, “Radiative Forcing and Ozone Depletion of a Decade of Satellite Megaconstellation Missions,” appeared in Earth’s Future on May 14, 2026.

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.

New data collected by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is helping researchers map the cosmic web in the greatest detail ever achieved, providing new insights into the network of galaxies as improved resolution reveals hidden features.

An international team of researchers led by the University of California, Riverside, revealed their newest findings based on Webb telescope data in a recent study published in the Astrophysical Journal, tracing the cosmic web back to the first billion years of our universe.

The cosmic web consists of filaments and sheets of dark matter that connect the universe’s galaxies through the voids of space, forming an intricate architecture and driving galaxy evolution.

James Webb Space Telescope

JWST has been a tremendous boon to scientists since its 2021 launch, revealing faint, distant galaxies in the infrared spectrum that would previously have been unresolvable. Researchers have used it for everything from collecting more precise data on the Hubble tension to discovering what astronomers call “Little Red Dots,” a series of unexpected, distant, bright red objects.

The speed of light is measured at 5.88 trillion miles per year, which defines the light-year, the unit astronomers use to measure distances across the cosmos. One billion light-years is considered our local neighborhood, but JWST observations stretch far beyond that, due to its incredible clarity. This allows scientists to resolve light from distant corners of the universe, which is now only reaching us billions of years later, providing a window into the ancient universe.

COSMOS-Web

COSMOS-Web, the largest JWST study ever conducted, provided 13.7 billion years of cosmic data for researchers to use in their mapping project. Designed expressly for mapping the cosmic web, COSMOS-web explored an area of sky the size of three full moons.

“JWST has completely changed our view of the universe, and COSMOS-Web was designed from the start to give us the wide, deep view we need to see the cosmic web,” said lead author Hossein Hatamnia, a graduate student at UCR and Carnegie Observatories. “For the first time, we can study the evolution of galaxies in cluster and filamentary structures across cosmic time, all the way from when the universe was a billion years old up to the nearby universe.”

With its incredibly high level of clarity, comparing the new JWST map to earlier Hubble Space Telescope maps of the same region reveals new structures that previous efforts failed to resolve. 

“The jump in depth and resolution is truly significant, and we can now see the cosmic web at a time when the universe was only a few hundred million years old, an era that was essentially out of reach before JWST,” said co-author Bahram Mobasher. “What used to look like a single structure now resolves into many, and details that were smoothed away before are now clearly visible.”

JWST Peers Back in Time 

“The telescope detects many more faint galaxies in the same patch of sky, and the distances to those galaxies are measured far more precisely,” Mobasher added. “Each galaxy can therefore be placed into the correct slice of cosmic time, sharpening the map’s resolution.”

This means that the new map is not only filling in scientific knowledge about the broader structure of the universe, but also how the structure was built over time. In this data, the team discovered that the cosmic web had a major effect on galaxy growth over time, while also suppressing star formation in older galaxies. The detailed maps of the comic web developed under COSMOS-web will be released to the public.

“The pipeline used to build the map, the catalog of 164,000 galaxies and their cosmic density,” Mobasher concluded, “and a video showing the cosmic web evolving across billions of years, has been released to the public.”

The paper, “Large-Scale Structure in COSMOS-Web: Tracing Galaxy Evolution in the Cosmic Web up to z ∼ 7 with the Largest JWST Survey,” appeared in the Astrophysical Journal on May 6, 2026.

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.

Neanderthals practiced a surprisingly advanced form of dentistry, detecting tooth decay and removing it with stone drills, according to recent Russian research at the Chagyrskaya Cave site, which reframes how advanced this archaic human species truly was.

A recent paper published in PLOS One by researchers from the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences builds on earlier work showcasing Neanderthal dental knowledge, including tooth picks and the use of medicinal plants, by revealing an even more invasive form of prehistoric dentistry.

At the center of the discovery is a single Neanderthal molar sourced from Russia’s Chagyrskaya Cave, featuring a deep, artificial hole reaching through to the pulp cavity.

Investigating a Neanderthal Tooth

Researchers compared the Neanderthal molar discovered at Chagyrskaya Cave with modern human teeth, experimenting with a stone drill to recreate the hole. The team had noticed that the hole in the Neanderthal tooth and the grooves on the molar’s side appeared to be rare examples of attempts to mitigate carious lesions, a type of tooth decay caused by acid-producing bacteria living in plaque. They sought to determine if their modern attempts to recreate the hole would produce similar microscopic grooves in the modern teeth.

One of the most interesting elements of the work was the identification of Neanderthals’ ability to understand medical issues in the long term and identify the root causes of specific maladies, as well as their level of fine manual dexterity. While the tooth infection would have been painful, the drilling would also have been excruciating without anesthesia. Yet despite this tremendous discomfort, they understood the specific cause and how to permanently remove it.

Moving the Timeline

Previously, the earliest known evidence of human dentistry known to scientists was the Villabruna specimen, discovered at Ripari Villabruna in northern Italy, according to Kseniya Kolobova, the recent study’s co-author, in an email to The Debrief. “Before the Chagyrskaya discovery, this was considered the oldest evidence of dental cavity treatment. The skeleton of a young man who died around 14,000 years ago was found there in 1988.”

“In 2015, researchers led by Stefano Benazzi published a study showing that his lower right third molar had a large cavity that was not just decay—it contained distinctive V-shaped striations and parallel microscratches that experiments confirmed were made by a pointed flint tool scraping and levering out infected tissue,” Kolobova added. “The enamel around the cavity was polished from wear, proving the individual survived the procedure.”

With the discovery of the Chagyrskaya tooth, the timeline altered again, now pushing back the earliest evidence of dentistry by about 45,000 years. Not only that, but the revised history now also includes another human species.

Another recent discovery at Riparo Fredian, a site near Garfagnana in Tuscany, is reportedly the next-oldest example at roughly 13,000 years old, and demonstrates successful tooth filling with a mixture of bitumen, fiber, and hair.

An Unusual Malady

The researchers pinpointed a likely initial cause of the tooth pain that would have necessitated this precocious ancient dentistry: a carious lesion.

“The evidence strongly points to a caries lesion as the initial cause of pain,” Kolobova said. “The micro-CT scans clearly show extensive demineralization of the dentin surrounding the drilled concavity, consistent with a deep carious lesion that had reached both the inner and outer layers. Additionally, a second carious focus was identified around the toothpick groove on the distal side of the crown, indicating the tooth was affected by decay in multiple locations.”

While carious lesions are a relatively common problem in modern dentistry, they would have been far less common in Neanderthals, thanks to their carnivorous diet. Carbohydrates allow cariogenic bacteria to ferment, which eats away at the enamel and dentin. Tartar also stems from a diet high in starches and agricultural products. This means that the researchers identifying two carious lesions in this small population in Chagyrskaya Cave is highly unusual, yet they say this is not enough evidence to suspect the population was living an atypical lifestyle.

An Expanding View of Neanderthals

The new findings fit into a broader rethinking of the extent of Neanderthal advancement, evidencing abilities beyond previous expectations. Human thumbs allow us to grip objects and manipulate our environments in ways beyond the capabilities of other lifeforms, yet earlier research concluded that Neanderthals were limited in making use of this evolutionary gift by a lack of fine motor skills compared to Homo sapiens.

With the discovery of advanced dental work, researchers have what may be the best evidence yet that the coordination gap may have been far less than previously assumed.

“For much of the 20th century, it was commonly assumed that Neanderthals lacked the fine motor skills of modern humans,” Kolobova explained. “Their robust, broad-fingered hands were thought to be adapted primarily for powerful grips rather than the precise finger control needed for delicate tasks. However, this perspective has been overturned by multiple lines of evidence.”

“Directly relevant to Chagyrskaya, researchers studying bone retouchers from the same cave had already shown these Neanderthals habitually used a delicate three-finger pinch grip,” Kolobova concludes.

“The dental drilling procedure now provides the most striking confirmation yet,” he adds, noting that it “directly demonstrates the application of such precision capabilities in a high-stakes medical context, moving the debate from anatomical theory to concrete evidence of a controlled, delicate manual task.”

The paper, “Earliest Evidence for Invasive Mitigation of Dental Caries by Neanderthals,” appeared in PLOS One on May 13, 2026.

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.

Hidden insights into the fall of meteors, long unrecognized in the observational data, are finally being revealed thanks to AI in new research out of Flagstaff, Arizona’s Lowell Observatory.

Detailed in a new paper published in Icarus, researchers used data from the Lowell Observatory Cameras for All-Sky Meteor Surveillance (LO-CAMS) network, part of the Global Meteor Network, which characterized over 28,000 meteor events.

Their work goes a long way toward expanding the parameters used to classify meteors, providing a much deeper understanding of what makes these space rocks so unique.

Meteors Explained

Meteors are objects that burn up in the sky in a brilliant streak across the sky, commonly called shooting or falling stars. Meteorites are those space rocks that manage to hold together and land on the Earth’s surface.

The terminology used to describe these objects can be confusing, as the distinction between a meteoroid, a meteor, and a meteorite may not always be readily apparent. When still in space, we call these rocks meteoroids, but as soon as they enter the Earth’s atmosphere, the differences are noted.

While meteors are a common sight in the night sky and have fascinated humans for millennia, there is still a great deal to learn about them, according to researchers at Lowell Observatory.

“Meteors have been observed for centuries, but only recently have we had datasets large and detailed enough to apply modern machine-learning methods,” said lead author Sam Hemmelgarn. “This allows us to extract physical information that was previously hidden in the data.”

Advancing Meteor Observations

Traditionally, only a few parameters were used to characterize meteors; the new work expanded this to 13, including speed, brightness, duration, height, and atmospheric density.

“Our goal was to move beyond traditional classification schemes,” said co-author Nick Moskovitz. “Modern meteor networks capture a wealth of observational information, and we wanted a framework that could fully take advantage of that.”

The team combined multiple machine learning algorithms to identify natural groupings in the data, which mirrored existing physical meteoroid models. Three key factors that dictate a meteor’s behavior upon atmospheric entry emerged from this analysis. These were its size and shape, how easily it heats up, also known as “activation,” and its path of travel.

“One of the most exciting results was how clearly the ‘activation’ behavior separated asteroidal material from cometary material,” Hemmelgarn explained. “That tells us we’re capturing something fundamentally physical, not just statistical patterns.”

A New Classification Scheme

As a result of their work, the researchers developed Hclass, a new classification system to identify a meteor’s hardness. On the hardest end of the new scale is dense material with a high iron content, generally associated with asteroids, while the distant end contains fragile, porous material likely to come from cometary debris.

The scheme in this new classification system is multi-layered, allowing for more general or more granular classifications depending on the researcher’s need. Additionally, it works with a broad range of datasets, from single digits to millions of observations.

“Hclass gives us a more nuanced view of meteoroid composition,” Hemmelgarn said. “It bridges the gap between classical meteor theory and the realities of modern, large-scale observations.”

The team tested their new scale by fitting data from known meteor showers to it and then examining how those matters behaved in real-world observations. Their validation was successful, with the meteors behaving as expected based on their classifications.

“This work shows that machine learning isn’t just about handling big data,” Moskovitz said. “It’s about turning those data into physical understanding of where this material comes from and how our solar system works.”

The paper, “A Machine Learning Approach to Meteor Classification,” appeared in Icarus on April 27, 2026.

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.