12 years on Mars — and NASA's Curiosity rover "has made its most unusual find to date," reports CNN — rocks made of pure sulfur.

"And it all began when the 1-ton rover happened to drive over a rock and crack it open, revealing yellowish-green crystals never spotted before on the red planet." "I think it's the strangest find of the whole mission and the most unexpected," said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "I have to say, there's a lot of luck involved here. Not every rock has something interesting inside...." White stones had been visible in the distance, and the mission scientists wanted a closer look. The rover drivers at JPL, who send instructions to Curiosity, did a 90-degree turn to put the robotic explorer in the right position for its cameras to capture a mosaic of the surrounding landscape. On the morning of May 30, Vasavada and his team looked at Curiosity's mosaic and saw a crushed rock lying amid the rover's wheel tracks. A closer picture of the rock made clear the "mind-blowing" find, he said...

"No one had pure sulfur on their bingo card," Vasavada said...

Members of the team were stunned twice — once when they saw the "gorgeous texture and color inside" the rock and then when they used Curiosity's instruments to analyze the rock and received data indicating it was pure sulfur, Vasavada said.
Vasavada also was grateful for the original landing site where Curiosity began methodically exploring back in 2012.

"I'm glad we chose something that was 12 years' worth of science."

Scientists at the University of Texas at Austin have developed a "smart soil" that can keep plants better hydrated and provide a controlled release of nutrients. As reported by New Atlas, tests found that it "drastically improved crop growth while using far less water." From the report: The soil gets its "smart" moniker thanks to the addition of a specially formulated hydrogel, which works to absorb more water vapor from the air overnight, then releasing it to the plants' roots during the day. Incorporating calcium chloride into the hydrogel also provides a slow release of this vital nutrient. The team tested the new smart soil in lab experiments, growing plants in 10 grams of soil, with some including 0.1 g of hydrogel. A day/night cycle was simulated, with 12 hours of darkness at 25 C (77 F) and either 60% or 90% relative humidity, followed by 12 hours of simulated sunlight at 35 C (95 F) and 30% humidity.

Sure enough, plants growing in the hydrogel soil showed a 138% boost to their stem length, compared to the control group. Importantly, the hydrogel-grown plants achieved this even while requiring 40% less direct watering. In future work, the team plans to try incorporating other types of fertilizers, and conducting longer field experiments. The research was published in the journal ACS Materials Letters.

A solar superstorm in May caused thousands of satellites to simultaneously maneuver to maintain altitude due to the thickening of the upper atmosphere, creating potential collision hazards as existing prediction systems struggled to cope. Space.com reports: According to a pre-print paper published on the online repository arXiv on June 12, satellites and space debris objects in low Earth orbit -- the region of space up to an altitude of 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) -- were sinking toward the planet at the speed of 590 feet (180 meters) per day during the four-day storm. To make up for the loss of altitude, thousands of spacecraft began firing their thrusters at the same time to climb back up. That mass movement, the authors of the paper point out, could have led to dangerous situations because collision avoidance systems didn't have time to calculate the satellites' changing paths.

The solar storm that battered Earth from May 7 to 10 reached the intensity of G5, the highest level on the five-step scale used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to assess the strength of solar storms. It was the strongest solar storm to hit Earth since 2003. The authors of the paper, however, pointed out that the environment around the planet has changed profoundly since that time. While only a few hundred satellites were orbiting Earth twenty years ago, there are thousands today. The authors of the paper put the number of "active payloads at [low Earth orbit]" at 10,000. [...] The new paper points out that space weather forecasts ahead of the May storm failed to accurately predict the duration and intensity of the event, making satellite collision predictions nearly impossible.

On the upside, the storm helped to clear out some junk as defunct satellites and debris fragments spiraled deeper into the atmosphere. The authors of the report estimate that thousands of space debris objects lost several kilometers in altitude during the storm. More powerful solar storms can be expected in the coming months as the peak of the current solar cycle -- the 11-year ebb and flow in the number of sunspots, solar flares and eruptions -- is expected in late 2024 and early 2025. The paper can be found here.

NASA reports in an article for Phys.Org: Scientists were stunned on May 30 when a rock that NASA's Curiosity Mars rover drove over cracked open to reveal something never seen before on the Red Planet: yellow sulfur crystals. Since October 2023, the rover has been exploring a region of Mars rich with sulfates, a kind of salt that contains sulfur and forms as water evaporates. But where past detections have been of sulfur-based minerals -- in other words, a mix of sulfur and other materials -- the rock Curiosity recently cracked open is made of elemental (pure) sulfur. It isn't clear what relationship, if any, the elemental sulfur has to other sulfur-based minerals in the area.

While people associate sulfur with the odor from rotten eggs (the result of hydrogen sulfide gas), elemental sulfur is odorless. It forms in only a narrow range of conditions that scientists haven't associated with the history of this location. And Curiosity found a lot of it -- an entire field of bright rocks that look similar to the one the rover crushed. "Finding a field of stones made of pure sulfur is like finding an oasis in the desert," said Curiosity's project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. "It shouldn't be there, so now we have to explain it. Discovering strange and unexpected things is what makes planetary exploration so exciting."

Following a comprehensive internal review, NASA announced Wednesday its intent to discontinue development of its VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover) project. NASA: NASA stated cost increases, delays to the launch date, and the risks of future cost growth as the reasons to stand down on the mission. The rover was originally planned to launch in late 2023, but in 2022, NASA requested a launch delay to late 2024 to provide more time for preflight testing of the Astrobotic lander. Since that time, additional schedule and supply chain delays pushed VIPER's readiness date to September 2025, and independently its CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) launch aboard Astrobotic's Griffin lander also has been delayed to a similar time. Continuation of VIPER would result in an increased cost that threatens cancellation or disruption to other CLPS missions. NASA has notified Congress of the agency's intent.

A drug has been shown to extend the lifespan of laboratory mice by nearly 25%, with treated mice displaying fewer cancers and improved health and strength. It earned them the nickname "supermodel grannies" due to their youthful appearance. "The drug is already being tested in people, but whether it would have the same anti-ageing effect is unknown," reports the BBC. From the report: The team at the MRC Laboratory of Medical Science, Imperial College London and Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore were investigating a protein called interleukin-11. Levels of it increase in the human body as we get older, it contributes to higher levels of inflammation, and the researchers say it flips several biological switches that control the pace of ageing.

The researchers performed two experiments. The first genetically engineered mice so they were unable to produce interleukin-11. The second waited until mice were 75 weeks old (roughly equivalent to a 55-year-old person) and then regularly gave them a drug to purge interleukin-11 from their bodies. The results, published in the journal Nature, showed lifespans were increased by 20-25% depending on the experiment and sex of the mice.

Old laboratory mice often die from cancer, however, the mice lacking interleukin-11 had far lower levels of the disease. And they showed improved muscle function, were leaner, had healthier fur and scored better on many measures of frailty.

Astronomers say they've detected two gases that could indicate the presence of life forms lurking in the clouds of Venus. The Guardian reports: Findings presented at the national astronomy meeting in Hull on Wednesday bolster evidence for a pungent gas, phosphine, whose presence on Venus has been fiercely disputed. A separate team revealed the tentative detection of ammonia, which on Earth is primarily produced by biological activity and industrial processes, and whose presence on Venus scientists said could not readily be explained by known atmospheric or geological phenomena. "It could be that if Venus went through a warm, wet phase in the past then as runaway global warming took effect [life] would have evolved to survive in the only niche left to it -- the clouds," said Dr Dave Clements, a reader in astrophysics at Imperial College London, told the meeting. "Our findings suggest that when the atmosphere is bathed in sunlight the phosphine is destroyed," Clements said. "All that we can say is that phosphine is there. We don't know what's producing it. It may be chemistry that we don't understand. Or possibly life."

In a second talk, Prof Jane Greaves, an astronomer at Cardiff University, presented preliminary observations from the Green Bank telescope indicating ammonia, which on Earth is made through either industrial processes or by nitrogen-converting bacteria. Greaves said: "Even if we confirmed both of these [findings], it is not evidence that we have found these magic microbes and they're living there today," adding that there were not yet "any ground truths." Dr Robert Massey, the deputy executive director at the Royal Astronomical Society, said in a statement: "These are very exciting findings but it must be stressed that the results are only preliminary and more work is needed to learn more about the presence of these two potential biomarkers in Venus's clouds. Nevertheless, it is fascinating to think that these detections could point to either possible signs of life or some unknown chemical processes. It will be interesting to see what further investigations unearth over the coming months and years."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The image, as it happens, comes from dozens of brain scans produced by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis who gave psilocybin, the compound in "magic mushrooms," to participants in a study before sending them into a functional M.R.I. scanner. The kaleidoscopic whirl of colors they recorded is essentially a heat map of brain changes, with the red, orange and yellow hues reflecting a significant departure from normal activity patterns. The blues and greens reflect normal brain activity that occurs in the so-called functional networks, the neural communication pathways that connect different regions of the brain.

The scans, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, offer a rare glimpse into the wild neural storm associated with mind-altering drugs. Researchers say they could provide a potential road map for understanding how psychedelic compounds like psilocybin, LSD and MDMA can lead to lasting relief from depression, anxiety and other mental health disorders. "Psilocybin, in contrast to any other drug we've tested, has this massive effect on the whole brain that was pretty unexpected," said Dr. Nico Dosenbach, a professor of neurology at Washington University and a senior author of the study. "It was quite shocking when we saw the effect size." Brian Mathur, a systems neuroscientist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, says these findings cannot show exactly what causes the therapeutic benefit of psilocybin, but "it's possible psilocybin is directly causing" the brain-network changes. That, or it is creating a psychedelic experience that in turn causes parts of the brain to behave differently.

The next step is to determine whether psilocybin's blood-flow changes in the brain or its direct effects on neurons, or both, are responsible for the brain-network disruptions. "The best part of this work is that it's going to provide a means forward for the field to develop further hypotheses that can and should be tested," Mathur says.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Atlantic: Now, after years of contentious relationships with academic researchers, Meta is opening a small pilot program that would allow a handful of them to access Instagram data for up to about six months in order to study the app's effect on the well-being of teens and young adults. The company will announce today that it is seeking proposals that focus on certain research areas -- investigating whether social-media use is associated with different effects in different regions of the world, for example -- and that it plans to accept up to seven submissions. Once approved, researchers will be able to access relevant data from study participants -- how many accounts they follow, for example, or how much they use Instagram and when. Meta has said that certain types of data will be off-limits, such as user-demographic information and the content of media published by users; a full list of eligible data is forthcoming, and it is as yet unclear whether internal information related to ads that are served to users or Instagram's content-sorting algorithm, for example, might be provided. The program is being run in partnership with the Center for Open Science, or COS, a nonprofit. Researchers, not Meta, will be responsible for recruiting the teens, and will be required to get parental consent and take privacy precautions.

Lab-grown pet food is to hit UK shelves as Britain becomes the first country in Europe to approve cultivated meat. From a report: The Animal and Plant Health Agency and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs have approved the product from the company Meatly. It is thought there will be demand for cultivated pet food, as animal lovers face a dilemma about feeding their pets meat from slaughtered livestock.

Research suggests the pet food industry has a climate impact similar to that of the Philippines, the 13th most populous country in the world. A study by the University of Winchester found that 50% of surveyed pet owners would feed their pets cultivated meat, while 32% would eat it themselves. The Meatly product is cultivated chicken. It is made by taking a small sample from a chicken egg, cultivating it with vitamins and amino acids in a lab, then growing cells in a container similar to those in which beer is fermented. The result is a pate-like paste.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: CNBC spoke to three startups -- France-based Zephalto, Florida-based Space Perspective and Arizona-based World View -- that aim to hoist tourists to the stratosphere using pressurized capsules and massive gas-filled balloons. "The capsule itself is designed to to carry eight customers and two crew into the stratosphere," said Ryan Hartman, CEO of World View. "There will be a center bar where people can gather, and then, of course, there will be a bathroom aboard the capsule." The balloon rides will last around 6 hours, but will not take passengers all the way to space. Most will reach heights of 15 to 19 miles above the earth's surface, flying in an area known as the stratosphere. The start of space is generally accepted by the U.S. government to be around 80 kilometers, or about 50 miles, above the earth's surface.

Jane Poynter, founder and co-CEO of Space Perspective, has a differing view. "There is no universal definition of space," Poynter said. "We are regulated as a spaceship. If we go over 98,000 feet, we are a spaceship. Outside the capsule, it's essentially a vacuum. We're above 99% of Earth's atmosphere, which is why the sky is so deep black." Compared to rocket-powered space tourism, the physical sensation that passengers will experience on a stratospheric balloon ride is more comparable to being on an airplane. Passengers will not experience weightlessness. "We don't need any physical requirements to board the balloon," said Vincent Farret d'Asties, the founder and chief pilot at Zephalto. "If you can board a standard plane, you can board the balloon."

All three companies told CNBC that they were pleased with consumer interest. World Views says it sold 1,250 tickets so far while Space Perspective has sold 1,800. Zephalto did not tell CNBC how many tickets it sold, but said its initial flights were fully booked. Ticket prices range from $50,000 per seat with World View to around $184,000 with Zephalto. Space Perspective sells tickets to its experience for $125,000 per seat. That's all assuming commercial service gets off the ground. Only Zephalto has performed crewed tests so far, though not at the company's target altitude of about 15 miles above the earth's surface.

Robin McKie writes via The Guardian: Scientists with Breakthrough Listen, the world's largest scientific research program dedicated to finding alien civilizations, say a host of technological developments are about to transform the search for intelligent life in the cosmos. These innovations will be outlined at the group's annual conference, which is to be held in the UK for the first time, in Oxford, this week. Several hundred scientists, from astronomers to zoologists, are expected to attend. "There are amazing technologies that are under development, such as the construction of huge new telescopes in Chile, Africa and Australia, as well as developments in AI," said astronomer Steve Croft, a project scientist with Breakthrough Listen. "They are going to transform how we look for alien civilizations."

Among these new instruments are the Square Kilometer Array, made up of hundreds of radio telescopes now being built in South Africa and Australia, and the Vera Rubin Observatory that is being constructed in Chile. The former will become the world's most powerful radio astronomy facility while the latter, the world's largest camera, will be able to image the entire visible sky every three or four nights, and is expected to help discover millions of new galaxies and stars. Both facilities are set to start observations in the next few years and both will provide data for Breakthrough Listen. Using AI to analyze these vast streams of information for subtle patterns that would reveal evidence of intelligent life will give added power to the search for alien civilizations, added Croft.

"Until now, we have been restricted to looking for signals deliberately sent out by aliens to advertise their existence. The new techniques are going to be so sensitive that, for the first time, we will be able to detect unintentional transmissions as opposed to deliberate ones and will be able to spot alien airport radar, or powerful TV transmitters -- things like that." [...] Croft remains optimistic that we will soon succeed in making contact. "We know that the conditions for life are everywhere, we know that the ingredients for life are everywhere. I think it would be deeply weird if it turned out we were the only inhabited planet in the galaxy or in the universe. But you know, it's possible."

A Californian startup funded by Bill Gates is making rich, fatty "butter" using just carbon dioxide and hydrogen, with other dairy-free alternatives in the works. New Atlas reports: The San Jose company, Savor, uses a thermochemical process to create its animal-like fat, which is free of the environmental footprint of both the dairy industry and plant-based alternatives. "They started with the fact that all fats are made of varying chains of carbon and hydrogen atoms," Gates wrote in a blog post. "Then they set out to make those same carbon and hydrogen chains -- without involving animals or plants. They ultimately developed a process that involves taking carbon dioxide from the air and hydrogen from water, heating them up, and oxidizing them to trigger the separation of fatty acids and then the formulation of fat."

"The idea of switching to lab-made fats and oils may seem strange at first," Gates wrote. "But their potential to significantly reduce our carbon footprint is immense. By harnessing proven technologies and processes, we get one step closer to achieving our climate goals." Savor's 'butter' is easily produced and scalable, but convincing people to swap out butter and other dairy products for 'experimental' foods will remain a challenge for the foreseeable future. Gates is hoping, however, that his support will do more than start a conversation. "The process doesn't release any greenhouse gases, and it uses no farmland and less than a thousandth of the water that traditional agriculture does," he added. "And most important, it tastes really good -- like the real thing, because chemically it is." The research has been published in the journal Nature Sustainability.

NASA: The stars above and on Earth aligned as an inspirational message and lyrics from the song "The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)" by hip-hop artist Missy Elliott were beamed to Venus via NASA's DSN (Deep Space Network). The agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California sent the transmission at 10:05 a.m. PDT on Friday, July 12. As the largest and most sensitive telecommunication service of NASA's Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program, the DSN has an array of giant radio antennas that allow missions to track, send commands, and receive scientific data from spacecraft venturing to the Moon and beyond. To date, the system has transmitted only one other song into space, making the transmission of Elliott's song a first for hip-hop and NASA.

"Both space exploration and Missy Elliott's art have been about pushing boundaries," said Brittany Brown, director, Digital and Technology Division, Office of Communications at NASA Headquarters in Washington, who initially pitched ideas to Missy's team to collaborate with the agency. "Missy has a track record of infusing space-centric storytelling and futuristic visuals in her music videos, so the opportunity to collaborate on something out of this world is truly fitting." The song traveled about 158 million miles (254 million kilometers) from Earth to Venus -- the artist's favorite planet. Transmitted at the speed of light, the radio frequency signal took nearly 14 minutes to reach the planet. The transmission was made by the 34-meter (112-foot) wide Deep Space Station 13 (DSS-13) radio dish antenna, located at the DSN's Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, near Barstow in California. Coincidentally, the DSS-13 also is nicknamed Venus.

Longtime Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot shares a report from Gizmodo: A team of researchers think they've discovered a cave on the Moon in radar images of the lunar surface, which they posit could be a future site for an established human presence on our rocky satellite. The tunnel is in the Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquility) pit, the deepest known pit on the Moon. (If the name is familiar to you, the Sea of Tranquility is where the Apollo 11 mission landed in 1969.) The pit formed due to a lava tube's roof collapse or a collapse of a void structure created by tectonic processes. To look for potential cave structures within the pit, the researchers studied side-looking radar images taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's Mini-RF instrument between 2009 and 2011. The team then conducted 3D radar simulations of potential geometries of the pit and its cave, to determine that the brightness they saw in radar images could be due to subsurface features. Ultimately, the team determined there is a tunnel in the pit that is between 98 feet (30 meters) long and 262ft (80m) long. The tunnel is roughly 148ft (45m) wide and is either flat or inclined with a maximum steepness of 45 degrees. "The exploration of lunar caves through future robotic missions could provide a fresh perspective on the lunar subsurface and yield new insights into the evolution of lunar volcanism," the team wrote in the paper. "Furthermore, direct exploration could confirm the presence of stable subsurface environments shielded from radiation and with optimal temperature conditions for future human utilization."

The findings have been published in the journal Nature Astronomy.