An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Conversation: On April 10 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration revealed the first picture of a black hole. The object is at the centre of a galaxy known as M87, about 55 million light-years away. The iconic ring structure instantly became one of the most recognized scientific images of the modern era. It showed a black hole "shadow" outlined by light from swirling hot gas -- just as predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity. The result supported the long-standing idea that the centers of galaxies house supermassive black holes. However, scientists have since had some disagreements on whether the details and structure of the ring in the original publication were accurate. Our new research, published today in Nature, used new techniques to investigate the original datasets. Not only do our results validate the original work, but they also provide a fresh perspective on the ring structure. Our independent results enhance confidence in one of the most significant modern scientific results. And we bring the image of a black hole millions of light-years away back into focus.

[...] When compared directly to images from the EHT collaboration, our result is consistent in diameter and overall orientation. Naturally, there are some differences in the fine details of ring width and surface brightness along the circumference, but the overall structure matches. This provides a fresh perspective on the iconic black hole ring while also resolving previous discrepancies. To prove this success didn't depend solely on advanced machine learning, we also developed a complementary imaging method based on traditional statistical techniques. This entirely different method also validated our structure using the new closure invariant data we produced. Overall, our work delivers a strong independent validation of the supermassive black hole structure at the centre of galaxy M87. And it could do more in the future. Our technique could also be useful in other situations where data from multiple sensors are combined to map unknown structures -- such as medical imaging or mapping earthquakes.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: The Food and Drug Administration said Monday that GLP-1 drugmakers must add a warning label about a rare eye condition that can cause sudden blindness. The condition, called nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy, or NAION, affects the optic nerve, which carries signals from the eye to the brain. When blood flow to the nerve is reduced or blocked, it can cause sudden vision loss. The condition is permanent with no known treatment. The FDA said "there is a potential increased risk of rare NAION" in people taking GLP-1 drugs. The agency's requirement applies to all GLP-1s, including Novo Nordisk's Ozempic and Wegovy and Eli Lilly's Mounjaro and Zepbound, as well as several older GLP-1 diabetes medications. [...] Previous research has found that GLP-1 use may increase the risk of NAION, and Lilly has said it was aware of studies on the potential link.

The FDA said it began looking into a possible link after a 2024 study published in JAMA Ophthalmology that found diabetes patients prescribed semaglutide were four times as likely to develop NAION as those not prescribed the drug. The agency said it reviewed reports of side effects submitted to its adverse event monitoring system and analyzed data from multiple clinical trials. Cases of NAION have been reported for all currently marketed GLP-1 drugs, the FDA found. However, FDA scientists were not able to identify a mechanism for how the drugs could increase the risk of the eye condition. Risk factors for NAION can overlap with conditions seen in people taking GLP-1 drugs, including Type 2 diabetes, obesity, sleep apnea and hypertension. "Patients and caregivers should be aware of a potential increased risk of NAION, a rare condition that can result in acute, painless, decreased vision in one eye, including permanent vision loss," with GLP-1 use, the FDA said in the release.

Futurism reports: While many scientists have long held that Mars is "geologically dead" inside, new research is adding to the growing body of evidence to the contrary.

As detailed in a new paper published in the journal Science Advances, an international team of researchers examined data collected by the European and Russian ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter in 2021, which found that Mars is slowly belching hydrogen chloride gas. The researchers suggest this gas is being released from hot magma deep beneath its surface after discovering intriguing new fissures along a massive volcano, indicating the planet may be geologically active after all — or at least it was until relatively recently.

The research could have significant implications for the possibility of ancient life on the Red Planet, hinting at a far warmer and thicker atmosphere — and an abundance of liquid water on its surface — in its not-too-distant past.... The team discovered new fissures measuring thousands of feet in length... suggesting ongoing activity underneath the surface. The researchers discovered discolorations along these fissures, concluding that they may be the result of seeping gases leaving mineral deposits similar to volcanic gas vents on Earth... The fissures could also be a perfect place to find evidence of past life on the Red Planet [argued Daniel Mège, the study's colead author and a Polish Academy of Sciences professor]... "If hydrothermal systems are active, they could contain the ingredients and energy needed for microorganisms to develop, and shield microorganisms from the hostile and changing environment above the surface."

Saturday NASA officials announced it's accepting applications for a new astronaut class, reports the Associated Press: With only 32 active astronauts, the space agency needs more recruits as it looks to expand humanity's presence beyond low-Earth orbit as quickly as possible... "We have far more work than we have astronauts," Artemis III commander Randy Bresnik told The Associated Press on Saturday. Aspiring astronauts have between now and Dec. 3 to submit their applications... [They'll begin their training by early 2028]. By then "we're going to have people on the moon — so don't delay," Bresnik urged potential candidates.

Bresnik and his three crewmates will blast into orbit next summer to practice docking their capsule with a pair of lunar landers, one built by Elon Musk's SpaceX and the other by Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin. Their mission will stick close to Earth — no lunar flyby — and serve as a dress rehearsal for the following year's Artemis IV mission that will attempt to land two astronauts near the lunar south pole. The moon base will materialize as more rovers, robots, structures and power grids are launched.
The article notes NASA's last call for new astronauts was two years ago, and "More than 8,000 applied, with 10 making the final cut in September 2025."

"I didn't think a rock like this existed on Earth," a geologist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Texas told the Washington Post. It looks like a polished rock, dark brown with a clay-colored stripe — but it's actually one of the oldest Mars meteorites ever found, blasted by an impact from the surface of Mars billions of years ago: Technically speaking it's a collection of eight rock fragments, the largest of which is about the size of a fist. Nearly two pounds of the meteorite was discovered in the Sahara in Mali in 2022, and most is now held by a museum in Maine. Within two years, an initial examination determined the meteorite hailed from Mars; scientists are now finally digging deeper, with stunning results.
It offers records of "interactions of water and rock and maybe even an imprint of the Martian atmosphere as it was losing water," says Lee Saper, co-author of a new paper recently published in Science. "It was only after we started looking closely that we realized this meteorite is really unique," said Yang Liu of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, the lead author of a new paper published in Science. "One of the paper's reviewers called it a Rosetta Stone for Mars."

Its mix of minerals "tells a story about how the planet's crust formed from cooling magma before it was eventually altered by subsurface water," NASA's JPL says in an announcement. The Washington Post reports: The story begins 4.1 billion years ago, when crystals of a mineral called zircon probably solidified out of molten magma on Mars. "That was a game changer," [said Yang Liu, a planetary scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California], since scientists can date zircon very precisely, and it has been rare in other Mars meteorites. The date immediately put the Teghaza meteorite on special footing, alongside only two other Mars rocks known to have formed by 4 billion years ago...

Perhaps most intriguingly, the researchers also saw signs that the rock had been exposed to water during its evolution, a find detailed in work published this summer in Science Advances.

A UN-backed report warns that even temporarily overshooting the Paris agreement's 1.5C warming target could cause permanent and widespread losses of glaciers, snow and polar ice sheets. With Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets already melting about six times faster than in the 1990s, the report argues that global temperatures should ultimately be brought back below 1C. The Guardian reports: The report, which comes as world leaders and diplomats converge on Turkey for the 31st annual Cop climate conference, documented rapid and accelerating melting of the cryosphere and polar oceans, with damages that range from the loss of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, driving sea level rises that threaten hundreds of millions of people, to thawing permafrost, which releases more planet-heating gas. Glaciers, which are still responding to historical warming, would only preserve about 70% of their current volume over a timescale of centuries if long-term heating were brought back down to 0.8C, the report found.

Meanwhile, the ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica, which are melting about six times faster today than in the 1990s, would continue to lose ice even in scenarios where overshoot is brief and temperature rise returns to 1.5C, the report found. The scientists said a safe, long-term temperature limit for polar ice sheets lies much closer to 1.0C of global heating, and possibly even lower. "Snow and ice respond rapidly to every fraction of a degree of warming," said [James Kirkham, a glaciologist at ICCI and the lead author of the report. "But most of these systems will take centuries or millennia to recover after overshoot, especially if tipping points are crossed that cause changes to become essentially irreversible."

Last month, a UNEP report found the world must cut emissions by 18% by 2030 and by 45% by 2035 to have a good chance of keeping temperatures from rising 1.7C above preindustrial levels. It found there were "no good outcomes" of remaining above 1.5C. The cryosphere report found that current policies, which will result in 2.8C of global heating, would reduce the mass of glacier ice to below 10% in the Rockies, Alps, Iceland and Scandinavia. If warming was limited to 1.5C, about 20-35% of the mass would remain. In the Hindu Kush Himalayas, where glaciers are a source of water for nearly a quarter of humanity, current policies will leave just 41% of the ice mass. If warming was limited to 1.5C, 83% would remain.

A vibrating mattress combined with two pills that release nitric oxide enhanced the brain's ability to clear an Alzheimer's-related protein. According to New Scientist, the experiment "caused the brain's blood vessels to swell and constrict more strongly, which enhanced the glymphatic system's clearance of [the protein]." From the report: [Kesa Kiviniemi at the University of Oulu in Finland] and his colleagues recruited 29 adults who hadn't been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease or any other cognitive issues. The participants took a pill that dissolves when under the tongue, releasing nitric oxide. They then lay on a mattress that caused their bodies to gently vibrate for 40 minutes, taking another pill halfway through. Blood samples revealed that their levels of a type of protein called beta-amyloid 42 increased by 35 per cent, on average, after the intervention. This protein, which usually helps neurons signal and connect to each other, misfolds and form clumps in Alzheimer's disease.

"The treatment seemed to enhance the glymphatic system's ability to clear beta-amyloid from the brain to the blood," says Kiviniemi. "A 35 per cent increase in circulating beta-amyloid 42 is a substantial and very interesting acute effect," says Tuomas Lilius at the University of Helsinki, who wasn't involved in the work. "It is certainly possible it could become biologically, and eventually clinically, relevant." Side effects were mild and minimal, with six of the participants experiencing issues such as nausea and headache. However, this could partly be due to the expectation of an effect from the nitric oxide pills. The researchers hope to overcome this in future work by including placebo pills.

Brain scans suggest the treatment enhanced the flow of fluid along glymphatic channels, probably by widening the brain's blood vessels and making them pump more strongly, says Kiviniemi. But other mechanisms could also be at play, says Brown. For instance, this intervention may slow the breakdown of beta-amyloid 42 by the liver, leading to higher amounts in the bloodstream, he says. Future studies could get around this by injecting markers into cerebrospinal fluid, which moves through the glymphatic system, to more directly measure its flow, says Brown. Additional experiments by Kiviniemi and his colleagues tested either only the mattress vibrations or only the nitric oxide pills on the same participants, at least a week before or after they underwent the combined approach. Based on brain scans, these solo interventions seemed to have less than half the effect on the glymphatic system than when they were combined. The findings have been published in the journal Nature Communications.

Blue Origin has unveiled a third stage called GS3 for its New Glenn rocket, designed to deliver satellite constellations directly to geostationary orbit and support heavy-lift missions to the Moon and deep space. The company also announced Northstar, a new methalox booster engine that it says produces 715,000 pounds of thrust while cutting mass by 30% and parts by 50% compared with the BE-4. Space.com reports: The new stage will be powered by one BE-7 engine, which the company developed for use on its Blue Moon spacecraft, one of the two private vehicles that NASA selected to be crewed lunar landers for its Artemis program. (The other is SpaceX's Starship.) Blue Moon landing missions won't need to launch on GS3-equipped New Glenn rockets, according to Blue Origin. But the third stage "can support sustained operations around the moon," the company wrote in today's blog post. "By delivering significant payload mass directly to trans-lunar injection (TLI), GS3 enables faster transit times while preserving propellant for on-orbit operations." And there's already demand for such services: Blue Origin also announced today that a government customer (which it did not name) has booked a GS3 mission to cislunar (Earth-moon) space, with launch targeted for 2028.

And the company dropped yet more news today -- that it's working on a new first-stage engine, called Northstar. Like Blue Origin's other booster engine, the BE-4, Northstar burns liquid oxygen and liquid methane propellant, a combination known as methalox. But the new engine is more powerful and less complex. "Compared to the BE-4 engine, Northstar reduces mass by 30% and parts count by 50%, while increasing thrust from 640,000 to 715,000 pounds-force," Blue Origin said in a second blog post today. "Manufacturing advancements have also significantly shortened production timelines, enabling assembly in less than a day." Northstar went from program approval to development testing in just 11 months, according to the company. But today's update did not say when the new engine will fly for the first time.

NASA has unveiled the X-70 Fractal, a new crewed experimental aircraft "designed to accelerate the development and testing of advanced aviation technologies." From a press release: The crewed X-70 features advanced, rapidly reconfigurable flight-control technology that will allow NASA to explore aircraft maneuverability in ways never before demonstrated in crewed flight. The aircraft can also accommodate up to 2,000 pounds of experimental payloads in internal and external locations, enabling a wide range of research and flight-testing opportunities.

The X-70 Fractal has a takeoff weight of 10,000 pounds and is designed to cruise at Mach .75, reach altitudes of up to 45,000 feet, and provide an operational range exceeding about 1,726 miles (1,500 nautical miles). These capabilities will enable NASA to conduct demanding flight research across a broad range of operating conditions.

The X-70 joins a storied legacy of experimental aircraft that have helped establish America's leadership in aviation. From the Bell X-1, which first broke the sound barrier in 1947, to the X-15 hypersonic research aircraft and today's X-59 quiet supersonic demonstrator, NASA has spent decades pushing the boundaries of flight. With the X-70, NASA will expand its capacity to conduct experimental flight research, accelerate the testing of emerging technologies, and advance the next generation of American aviation.

joshuark shares a report from Wired: After 22 years in orbit and a failed rescue mission this summer, it is highly likely that the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory will crash into Earth sometime next week. It is not known where on the planet the spacecraft -- which is roughly as big as a large elevator -- will fall. Despite its size, experts say the risk to the public is relatively low. The observatory was designed to operate for a few years in low Earth orbit, but it far exceeded its expected lifespan, helping to make many important discoveries about the evolution of the cosmos, including the study of supernovas and the destruction of stars by black holes. However, in 2024, increased solar activity heated and expanded the upper layers of Earth's atmosphere, increasing the drag on the satellite and accelerating its descent. Without a propulsion system capable of correcting its orbit, its days were numbered. The U.S. Space Force now expects Swift to reenter Earth's atmosphere around November 6. Most of the spacecraft is expected to burn up, although some components could survive and reach the ground (but most likely the ocean).

"The most likely survivors are its six heavy reaction wheels, the spinning flywheels it used to aim itself, along with tougher telescope parts such as lenses and mirrors," Dean Sladen, a quality manager and aerospace engineer at Accu Components, told Space.com. "Only a handful of small, scorched fragments are expected to make it down -- nothing recognizable as a telescope."

"NASA's own orbital debris requirements state that the risk of human casualty from surviving debris shall not exceed one in 10,000, so it is highly likely this work has been completed but not published," Sladen said regarding the risk assessment. "Personally, I believe it should be published, as NASA has done with previous satellites. The risk is almost certainly very small, but it would give people a clear, factual picture rather than guesswork."

Researchers have confirmed the presence of intact biomolecules and mineralized red blood cells inside the 115-million-year-old fossilized bones of a juvenile Aratasaurus museunacionali from Brazil. The discovery challenges assumptions about how long blood-related biomolecules can survive and could help scientists study dinosaur metabolism, blood evolution and even how traces of ancient life might be preserved on other worlds. Popular Science reports: The evidence exists inside the fossilized limb bones of a juvenile Aratasaurus museunacionali. Discovered in 2008, A. museunacionali was an Early Cretaceous theropod that lived in present-day northeastern Brazil. The fossils suggest a dinosaur measuring over 10 feet long and weighing about 75 pounds, but given its young age, A. museunacionali likely grew even larger. After carefully examining thin slices of the fossils, paleontologists located the mineralized red blood cell molecular components, along with a complex manganese oxide called hausmannite. This material helped maintain the cellular structures of heme, a ring-shaped molecule that contains iron and binds many proteins, especially hemoglobin. The hausmannite also helped preserve additional biomolecules found in the blood, such as the amino acids in collagen. The study's authors theorize this level of preservation could only occur following a rapid burial in an environment that was rich in microbes, but low in oxygen at the same time. The findings have been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) reported today that they used OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra language model to raise a small, open source Qwen model's math score roughly sixfold by directly editing its weights -- the numerical parameters that govern its behavior. Rikiya Takehi, Jayden Teoh, Alex Zhang and Omar Khattab described their work in a research blog post published November 2. They call the approach "weight-space programming" and tested Astra's ability to interpret and alter networks without using conventional training procedures to generate the edits.

In the strongest language-model example, Astra's intervention raised Qwen3.5-0.8B's MATH-500 score from 7.9% to 48.1% while touching approximately 0.016% of its weights. The improvement came primarily from correcting repetitive reasoning—a distinction that shaped both the technical findings and the debate over their implications. Their experiments explored a broader possibility: AI systems that inspect, repair and construct other neural networks by working directly on their internal machinery. "This is cool as heck!" wrote Yuchen Jin, a technical staffer at Databricks and former co-founder and CTO of Hyperbolic Labs who was unaffiliated with the research, on X. "Imagine using a large LLM to directly edit a smaller model's weights and dramatically improve its capabilities. It's like gene editing for neural networks. Even cooler than distillation!"

Voyage AI staff researcher Chandan Singh, formerly of Microsoft AI, also reacted to the findings: "For anyone questioning whether this post is overhyped, I think they are actually *underselling* the approach."

At the Seventh Manned Spaceflight Conference in Beijing, Chinese space officials publicly outlined the most detailed roadmap yet for landing astronauts on the Moon "before 2030." Ars Technica reports: China's lunar landings will involve a lunar-orbit rendezvous similar to what NASA did in the 1960s and early 1970s with the Apollo program. However, lacking a rocket as powerful as the Saturn V vehicle, the crew and lunar lander will launch separately to the Moon. According to slides shared on social media, the current plan involves:

- An uncrewed test of the Long March 10A rocket (a single-stick variant, with no boosters) and the Mengzhou spacecraft to low-Earth orbit. Target: early 2027
- An uncrewed test of the larger Long March 10 rocket (a core stage with two boosters) and the Lanyue lunar lander, including descent/ascent from Moon's surface. Target: 2028
- A concurrent launch of two Long March 10 rockets, one carrying uncrewed Mengzhou and the other the Lanyue vehicle; they will dock in lunar orbit. Target: 2029
- Dual launch of Long March 10 rockets, this time with crew on the Mengzhou spacecraft, leading to crewed landing mission. Target: "Before 2030"

The public release of this new information provides a timeline for gauging China's technical progress in its efforts to land humans on the Moon before 2030 and beat NASA and the United States back to the lunar surface. Notably, the plan (for now, at least) omits a mission similar to Apollo 8 or Artemis II, which involved a crew flying out to the Moon and either entering orbit or passing close by before returning to Earth. The Mengzhou vehicle should still get a workout closer to Earth with humans on board as part of missions carrying astronauts to Tiangong, China's space station in low-Earth orbit.

CNN reports: The popular theory that comets were crucial in kick-starting life on Earth billions of years ago may not hold up, according to new computer simulations that counter decades of scientific thinking. The finding suggests the fragile organic molecules supposedly carried by the icy objects would have been destroyed on impact, upending an established origin of life theory that dates back to at least 1961 [with earlier versions postulated in 1908]...

Early in its history — over 4 billion years ago — Earth may have experienced a period of heavy bombardment from more than 100,000 comets larger than 100 meters (328 feet), according to the new study, published Wednesday in the journal Scientific Reports. Those impacts, however, were mostly too heavy for life-starting molecules to withstand. The team used the latest models of comet formation and evolution to simulate this early planetary period 100,000 times. "Given what we know about surface environments on the early Earth, on average, our simulations found that there were no successful impacts," said lead study author Richard Anslow, who conducted the research while completing his doctorate at the Institute of Astronomy of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom... "The typical velocities of these comets when they impact the Earth meant that actually very few, if any, would have been able to deliver intact organic molecules, so comets actually don't seem to be as useful for prebiotic chemistry as was previously thought," Anslow said.

More precisely, 54% of the simulations showed no impact at all, while the remaining 46% had at least one and a "tiny minority" returned up to three collisions, Anslow said. "We can't rule out confidently that there was never a successful impact — there could have been one of these fluke impacts." However, such flukes had to occur in a "perfect location" that already met several important conditions, including the presence of liquid water and other chemicals needed to support life. That combination makes the overall process unlikely, he added.
The article notes his argument that even if a successful impact occurred, it's unlikely an important chemical like hydrogen cyanide (HCN) could survive the impact, and would've dissolved in an ocean impact. Plus, "many other precursor molecules are also needed, such as compounds that contain phosphorus and sulfur, but these are not routinely found in comets, Anslow said." An alternative cosmic source of organic material could have been asteroids, which typically struck Earth more slowly and in greater numbers. Anslow pointed to recent findings on samples from asteroids Bennu and Ryugu, which contain the majority of protein-building amino acids. The recent study also raises another intriguing possibility: While Earth may not have had the ideal conditions to foster HCN from comet impacts, ancient Mars might have been better suited. "Because Mars is much smaller than Earth and further away from the sun, the typical impact velocity of comets is much lower, so while these impacts on Earth were destroying most of the HCN, this wasn't the case so much for Mars," Anslow said. This idea could add another dimension to the long-standing question of whether the red planet once supported life.

While the authors closely analyzed how HCN could have survived comet impact, the chemical may have undergone reactions before the icy bodies entered Earth's atmosphere, said Queenie Chan, an associate professor of Earth sciences at Royal Holloway University of London, who was not involved with the study. This process could have created biologically important compounds, such as those protein building blocks, that are less volatile and more likely to survive.

The Hubble Space Telescope "will plunge back into the atmosphere in the early-to-mid-2030s," reports Ars Technica.

So now NASA has released a Request For Information (RFI) "asking commercial companies for ideas on how to reboost, service, or a controlled disposal of Hubble." Specifically, NASA is looking for information about companies' current and near-term capabilities for capturing Hubble and boosting it to an altitude of at least 373 miles (600 km), enhancing the telescope's performance, or guiding Hubble to a controlled reentry. "The requirement includes that the boost and/or servicing mission must not harm the HST and that this mission is expected to occur by 2032," NASA wrote in the RFI. The contractor would be responsible for providing the launch vehicle, servicing spacecraft, mission operations, and "crew if applicable."

NASA is not committing to buying a Hubble rescue mission, but officials want to know who might be interested in mounting such a mission, how much it would cost, and which companies would have a realistic shot at reaching Hubble before it falls out of orbit and burns up on reentry. Orbital dynamicists currently predict that it will likely happen in 2033 or 2034 without intervention, but reentry forecasts can change based on solar activity... A reboost to NASA's requirement of 373 miles (600 km) would likely keep Hubble in orbit for at least 25 more years.
"NASA last raised the orbit of Hubble in 2002," the article points out, "when the Space Shuttle Columbia visited the observatory for a servicing mission." The final shuttle servicing flight in 2009 did not reboost the telescope's orbit, and with the retirement of the shuttle fleet two years later, Hubble has steadily lost altitude with no way to stave off eventual destruction... NASA's newer flagship observatories, sometimes described as successors to Hubble, are not actually one-for-one replacements. Hubble is tuned to observe the Universe in visible and ultraviolet light, while the Webb and Roman telescopes peer deeper into the infrared Universe. Astronomers will likely have to wait for the launch of NASA's Habitable Worlds Observatory in the 2040s for an improvement on Hubble's visible and ultraviolet vision.