Science – Page 2

Many genes associated with dog behavior influence human personalities, too

Behavioral science, Biology, Dogs, Genetics, Genomics, golden retrievers, Science / Kris Guyer / November 26, 2025

Many dog breeds are noted for their personalities and behavioral traits, from the distinctive vocalizations of huskies to the herding of border collies. People have worked to identify the genes associated with many of these behaviors, taking advantage of the fact that dogs can interbreed. But that creates its own experimental challenges, as it can be difficult to separate some behaviors from physical traits distinctive to the breed—small dog breeds may seem more aggressive simply because they feel threatened more often.

To get around that, a team of researchers recently did the largest gene/behavior association study within a single dog breed. Taking advantage of a population of over 1,000 golden retrievers, they found a number of genes associated with behaviors within that breed. A high percentage of these genes turned out to correspond to regions of the human genome that have been associated with behavioral differences as well. But, in many cases, these associations have been with very different behaviors.

Gone to the dogs

The work, done by a team based largely at Cambridge University, utilized the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study, which involved over 3,000 owners of these dogs filling out annual surveys that included information on their dogs’ behavior. Over 1,000 of those owners also had blood samples obtained from their dogs and shipped in; the researchers used these samples to scan the dogs’ genomes for variants. Those were then compared to ratings of the dogs’ behavior on a range of issues, like fear or aggression directed toward strangers or other dogs.

Using the data, the researchers identified when different regions of the genome were frequently associated with specific variants. In total, 14 behavioral tendencies were examined, and 12 genomic regions were associated with specific behaviors, and another nine showed somewhat weaker associations. For many of these traits, it was difficult to find much because golden retrievers are notoriously friendly and mellow dogs, so they tended to score low on traits like aggression and fear.

That result was significant, as some of these same regions of the genome had been associated with very different behaviors in populations that were a mix of breeds. For example, two different regions associated with touch sensitivity in golden retrievers had been linked to a love of chasing and owner-directed aggression in a non-breed-specific study. That finding suggests that the studies were identifying genes that may be involved in setting the stage for behaviors, but were directed into specific outcomes by other genetic or environmental factors.

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Formation of oceans within icy moons could cause the waters to boil

astronomy, freezing, ice, moons, oceans, planetary science, Science / Kris Guyer / November 25, 2025

That can have significant consequences on the stresses experienced by the icy shells of these moons. Water is considerably more dense than ice. So, as a moon’s ocean freezes up, its interior will expand, creating outward forces that press against the gravity holding the moon together. The potential of this transition to shape the surface geology of a number of moons, including Europa and Enceladus, has already been explored. So, the researchers behind the new work decided to look at the opposite issue: what happens when the interior starts to melt?

Rather than focus on a specific moon, the team did a general model of an ice-covered ocean. This model treated the ice shell as an elastic surface, meaning it wouldn’t just snap, and placed viscous ice below that. Further down, there was a liquid ocean and eventually a rocky core. As the ice melted and the ocean expanded, the researchers tracked the stresses on the ice shell and the changes in pressure that occurred at the ice-ocean interface. They also tracked the spread of thermal energy through the ice shell.

Pressure drop

Obviously, there are limits to how much the outer shell can flex to accommodate the shrinking of the inner portions of the moon that are melting. This creates a low-pressure area under the shell. The consequences of this depend on the moon’s size. For larger moons—and this includes most of the moons the team looked at, including Europa—there were two options. For some, gravity is sufficiently strong to keep the pressure at a point where the water at the interface remains liquid. In others, the gravity was enough to cause even an elastic surface to fail, leading to surface collapse.

For smaller moons, however, this doesn’t work out; the pressure gets low enough that water will boil even at the ambient temperatures (just above the freezing point of water). In addition, the low pressure will likely cause any gases dissolved in the water to be released. The result is that gas bubbles should form at the ice-water interface. “Boiling is possible on these bodies—and not others—because they are small and have a relatively low gravitational acceleration,” the researchers conclude. “Consequently, less ocean underpressure is needed to counterbalance the [crustal] pressure.”

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Mushroom foragers collect 160 species for food, medicine, art, and science

morel mushrooms, mushrooms, Science, syndication / Rejus Almole / November 25, 2025

Like many mushroom harvesters, I got interested in foraging for fungi during the COVID-19 pandemic.

I had been preparing for a summer of field work studying foraged desert plants in a remote part of Australia when the pandemic hit, and my travel plans were abruptly frozen. It was March, right before morel mushrooms emerge in central Pennsylvania.

I wasn’t doing a lot other than going on long hikes and taking classes remotely at Penn State for my doctoral degree in ecology and anthropology. One of the classes was an agroforestry class with Eric Burkhart. We studied how agriculture and forests benefit people and the environment.

These two things eventually led to a yearslong project on mushroom harvesting in our region.

Why people forage

Foragers have been harvesting wild mushrooms in what is now Pennsylvania and the rest of the US mid-Atlantic region for generations, but the extent and specifics of the practice in the region had not been formally studied.

In 2021, Burkhart and I decided that we wanted to better understand the variety of wild mushroom species that Pennsylvania harvesters collect and what they use them for.

We conducted a series of surveys in 2022 and 2023 that revealed a wide variety of fungi are foraged in the region—though morels, chicken of the woods, and chanterelles are most common. We also learned that harvesters use the mushrooms primarily for food and medicinal purposes, and that foragers create communities that share knowledge. These community-based projects often use social media tools as a way for mushroom harvesters to share pictures, notes, and even the results of DNA sequences.

Our findings were published in the journal Economic Botany in October 2025.

160 species

Having spent a year building connections with local mushroom harvesters, starting in central Pennsylvania, including members of mushroom clubs and mycological associations, we recruited a diverse group of harvesters from around the mid-Atlantic. We also used mushroom festivals, social media, and word of mouth to get the word out.

We asked harvesters about their favorite mushrooms, common harvesting practices, resources they used while harvesting, and any sustainability practices.

Over 800 harvesters responded to the survey and reported that, collectively, they foraged 160 species of wild mushrooms. Morels and chicken of the woods were the two most popular, as each were reported by 13 percent of respondents. About 10 percent of respondents reported collecting chanterelles. Other popular species were hen of the woods, oysters, lion’s mane, black trumpet, honey mushroom, turkey tail, bolete, reishi, puffball, chaga, shrimp of the woods, and Dryad’s saddle, which is also known as the pheasant’s back mushroom.

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Why synthetic emerald-green pigments degrade over time

art conservation, chemistry, culture, pigments, Science / Kris Guyer / November 24, 2025

Perhaps most relevant to this current paper is a 2020 study in which scientists analyzed Munch’s The Scream, which was showing alarming signs of degradation. They concluded the damage was not the result of exposure to light, but humidity—specifically, from the breath of museum visitors, perhaps as they lean in to take a closer look at the master’s brushstrokes.

Let there be (X-ray) light

Co-author Letizia Monico during the experiments at the European Synchrotron. ESRF

Emerald-green pigments are particularly prone to degradation, so that’s the pigment the authors of this latest paper decided to analyze. “It was already known that emerald-green decays over time, but we wanted to understand exactly the role of light and humidity in this degradation,” said co-author Letizia Monico of the University of Perugia in Italy.

The first step was to collect emerald-green paint microsamples with a scalpel and stereomicroscope from an artwork of that period—in this case, The Intrigue (1890) by James Ensor, currently housed in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, in Antwerp, Belgium. The team analyzed the untreated samples using Fourier transform infrared imaging, then embedded the samples in polyester resin for synchrotron radiation X-ray analysis. They conducted separate analyses on both commercial and historical samples of emerald-green pigment powders and paint tubes, including one from a museum collection of paint tubes used by Munch.

Next, the authors created their own paint mockups by mixing commercial emerald-green pigment powders and their lab-made powders with linseed oil, and then applied the concoctions to polycarbonate substrates. They also squeezed paint from the Munch paint tube onto a substrate. Once the mockups were dry, thin samples were sliced from each mockup and also analyzed with synchrotron radiation. Then the mockups were subjected to two aging protocols designed to determine the effects of UV light (to simulate indoor lighting) and humidity on the pigments.

The results: In the mockups, light and humidity trigger different degradation pathways in emerald-green paints. Humidity results in the formation of arsenolite, making the paint brittle and prone to flaking. Light dulls the color by causing trivalent arsenic already in the pigment to oxidize into pentavalent compounds, forming a thin white layer on the surface. Those findings are consistent with the analyzed samples taken from The Intrigue, confirming the degradation is due to photo-oxidation. Light, it turns out, is the greatest threat to that particular painting, and possibly other masterpieces from the same period.

Science Advances, 2025. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.ady1807 (About DOIs).

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This hacker conference installed a literal antivirus monitoring system

Science, Security, syndication / Tim Belzer / November 22, 2025

Organizers had a way for attendees to track CO₂ levels throughout the venue—even before they arrived.

Hacker conferences—like all conventions—are notorious for giving attendees a parting gift of mystery illness. To combat “con crud,” New Zealand’s premier hacker conference, Kawaiicon, quietly launched a real-time, room-by-room carbon dioxide monitoring system for attendees.

To get the system up and running, event organizers installed DIY CO₂ monitors throughout the Michael Fowler Centre venue before conference doors opened on November 6. Attendees were able to check a public online dashboard for clean air readings for session rooms, kids’ areas, the front desk, and more, all before even showing up. “It’s ALMOST like we are all nerds in a risk-based industry,” the organizers wrote on the convention’s website.

“What they did is fantastic,” Jeff Moss, founder of the Defcon and Black Hat security conferences, told WIRED. “CO₂ is being used as an approximation for so many things, but there are no easy, inexpensive network monitoring solutions available. Kawaiicon building something to do this is the true spirit of hacking.”

Elevated levels of CO₂ lead to reduced cognitive ability and facilitate transmission of airborne viruses, which can linger in poorly ventilated spaces for hours. The more CO₂ in the air, the more virus-friendly the air becomes, making CO₂ data a handy proxy for tracing pathogens. In fact, the Australian Academy of Science described the pollution in indoor air as “someone else’s breath backwash.” Kawaiicon organizers faced running a large infosec event during a measles outbreak, as well as constantly rolling waves of COVID-19, influenza, and RSV. It’s a familiar pain point for conference organizers frustrated by massive gaps in public health—and lack of control over their venue’s clean air standards.

“In general, the Michael Fowler venue has a single HVAC system, and uses Farr 30/30 filters with a rating of MERV-8,” Kawaiicon organizers explained, referencing the filtration choices in the space where the convention was held. MERV-8 is a budget-friendly choice–standard practice for homes. “The hardest part of the whole process is being limited by what the venue offers,” they explained. “The venue is older, which means less tech to control air flow, and an older HVAC system.”

Kawaiicon’s work began one month before the conference. In early October, organizers deployed a small fleet of 13 RGB Matrix Portal Room CO₂ Monitors, an ambient carbon dioxide monitor DIY project adapted from US electronics and kit company Adafruit Industries. The monitors were connected to an Internet-accessible dashboard with live readings, daily highs and lows, and data history that showed attendees in-room CO₂ trends. Kawaiicon tested its CO₂ monitors in collaboration with researchers from the University of Otago’s public health department.

“That’s awesome,” says Adafruit founder and engineer Limor “Ladyada” Fried about the conference’s adaptation of the Matrix Portal project. “The best part is seeing folks pick up new skills and really understand how we measure and monitor air quality in the real world (like at a con during a measles flare-up)! Hackers and makers are able to be self-reliant when it comes to their public-health information needs.” (For the full specs of the Kawaiicon build, you can check out the GitHub repository here.)

The Michael Fowler Centre is a spectacular blend of Scandinavian brutalism and interior woodwork designed to enhance sound and air, including two grand pou—carved Māori totems—next to the main entrance that rise through to the upper foyers. Its cathedral-like acoustics posed a challenge to Kawaiicon’s air-hacking crew, which they solved by placing the RGB monitors in stereo. There were two on each level of the Main Auditorium (four total), two in the Renouf session space on level 1, plus monitors in the daycare and Kuracon (kids’ hacker conference) areas. To top it off, monitors were placed in the Quiet Room, at the Registration Desk, and in the Green Room.

“The things we had to consider were typical health and safety, and effective placement (breathing height, multiple monitors for multiple spaces, not near windows/doors),” a Kawaiicon spokesperson who goes by Sput online told WIRED over email.

“To be honest, it is no different than having to consider other accessibility options (e.g., access to venue, access to talks, access to private space for personal needs),” Sput wrote. “Being a tech-leaning community it is easier for us to get this set up ourselves, or with volunteer help, but definitely not out of reach given how accessible the CO₂ monitor tech is.”

Kawaiicon’s attendees could quickly check the conditions before they arrived and decide how to protect themselves accordingly. At the event, WIRED observed attendees checking CO₂ levels on their phones, masking and unmasking in different conference areas, and watching a display of all room readings on a dashboard at the registration desk.

In each conference session room, small wall-mounted monitors displayed stoplight colors showing immediate conditions: green for safe, orange for risky, and red to show the room had high CO₂ levels, the top level for risk.

“Everyone who occupies the con space we operate have a different risk and threat model, and we want everyone to feel they can experience the con in a way that fits their model,” the organizers wrote on their website. “Considering Covid-19 is still in the community, we wanted to make sure that everyone had all the information they needed to make their own risk assessment on ‘if’ and ‘how’ they attended the con. So this is our threat model and all the controls and zones we have in place.”

Colorful custom-made Kawaiicon posters by New Zealand artist Pepper Raccoon placed throughout the Michael Fowler Centre displayed a QR code, making the CO₂ dashboard a tap away, no matter where they were at the conference.

“We think this is important so folks don’t put themselves at risk having to go directly up to a monitor to see a reading,” Kawaiicon spokesperson Sput told WIRED, “It also helps folks find a space that they can move to if the reading in their space gets too high.”

It’s a DIY solution any conference can put in place: resources, parts lists, and assembly guides are here.

Kawaiicon’s organizers aren’t keen to pretend there were no risks to gathering in groups during ongoing outbreaks. “Masks are encouraged, but not required,” Kawaiicon’s Health and Safety page stated. “Free masks will be available at the con if you need one.” They encouraged attendees to test before coming in, and for complete accessibility for all hackers who wanted to attend, of any ability, they offered a full virtual con stream with no ticket required.

Trying to find out if a venue will have clean or gross recycled air before attending a hacker conference has been a pain point for researchers who can’t afford to get sick at, or after, the next B-Sides, Defcon, or Black Hat. Kawaiicon addresses this headache. But they’re not here for debates about beliefs or anti-science trolling. “We each have our different risk tolerance,” the organizers wrote. “Just leave others to make the call that is best for them. No one needs your snarky commentary.”

This story originally appeared at WIRED.com.

Wired.com is your essential daily guide to what’s next, delivering the most original and complete take you’ll find anywhere on innovation’s impact on technology, science, business and culture.

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First revealed in spy photos, a Bronze Age city emerges from the steppe

aerial archaeology, ancient cities, ancient people did stuff, Archaeology, bronze age, Kazakhstan, satellite archaeology, Science / Paul Patrick / November 22, 2025

An unexpectedly large city lies in a sea of grass inhabited largely by nomads.

This bronze ax head was found in the western half of Semiyarka. Credit: Radivojevic et al. 2025

Today all that’s left of the ancient city of Semiyarka are a few low earthen mounds and some scattered artifacts, nearly hidden beneath the waving grasses of the Kazakh Steppe, a vast swath of grassland that stretches across northern Kazakhstan and into Russia. But recent surveys and excavations reveal that 3,500 years ago, this empty plain was a bustling city with a thriving metalworking industry, where nomadic herders and traders might have mingled with settled metalworkers and merchants.

Photo of two people standing on a grassy plain under a gray sky — Radivojevic and Lawrence stand on the site of Semiyarka. Credit: Peter J. Brown

Welcome to the City of Seven Ravines

University College of London archaeologist Miljana Radivojevic and her colleagues recently mapped the site with drones and geophysical surveys (like ground-penetrating radar, for example), tracing the layout of a 140-hectare city on the steppe in what’s now Kazakhstan.

The Bronze Age city once boasted rows of houses built on earthworks, a large central building, and a neighborhood of workshops where artisans smelted and cast bronze. From its windswept promontory, it held a commanding view of a narrow point in the Irtysh River valley, a strategic location that may have offered the city “control over movement along the river and valley bottom,” according to Radivojevic and her colleagues. That view inspired archaeologists’ name for the city: Semiyarka, or City of Seven Ravines.

Archaeologists have known about the site since the early 2000s, when the US Department of Defense declassified a set of photographs taken by its Corona spy satellite in 1972, when Kazakhstan was a part of the Soviet Union and the US was eager to see what was happening behind the Iron Curtain. Those photos captured the outlines of Semiyarka’s kilometer-long earthworks, but the recent surveys reveal that the Bronze Age city was much larger and much more interesting than anyone realized.

This 1972 Corona image shows the outlines of Semiyarka’s foundations. Radivojevic et al. 2025

When in doubt, it’s potentially monumental

Most people on the sparsely populated steppe 3,500 years ago stayed on the move, following trade routes or herds of livestock and living in temporary camps or small seasonal villages. If you were a time-traveler looking for ancient cities, the steppe just isn’t where you’d go, and that’s what makes Semiyarka so surprising.

A few groups of people, like the Alekseeva-Sargary, were just beginning to embrace the idea of permanent homes (and their signature style of pottery lies in fragments all over what’s left of Semiyarka). The largest ancient settlements on the steppe covered around 30 hectares—nowhere near the scale of Semiyarka. And Radivojevic and her colleagues say that the layout of the buildings at Semiyarka “is unusual… deviating from more conventional settlement patterns observed in the region.”

What’s left of the city consists mostly of two rows of earthworks: kilometer-long rectangles of earth, piled a meter high. The geophysical survey revealed that “substantial walls, likely of mud-brick, were built along the inside edges of the earthworks, with internal divisions also visible.” In other words, the long mounds of earth were the foundations of rows of buildings with rooms. Based on the artifacts unearthed there, Radivojevic and her colleagues say most of those buildings were probably homes.

The two long earthworks meet at a corner, and just behind that intersection sits a larger mound, about twice the size of any of the individual homes. Based on the faint lines traced by aerial photos and the geophysical survey, it may have had a central courtyard or chamber. In true archaeologist fashion, Durham University archaeologist Dan Lawrence, a coauthor of the recent paper, describes the structure as “potentially monumental,” which means it may have been a space for rituals or community gatherings, or maybe the home of a powerful family.

The city’s layout suggests “a degree of architectural planning,” as Radivojevic and her colleagues put it in their recent paper. The site also yielded evidence of trading with nomadic cultures, as well as bronze production on an industrial scale. Both are things that suggest planning and organization.

“Bronze Age communities here were developing sophisticated, planned settlements similar to those of their contemporaries in more traditionally ‘urban’ parts of the ancient world,” said Lawrence.

Who put the bronze in the Bronze Age? Semiyarka, apparently

Southeast of the mounds, the ground was scattered with broken crucibles, bits of copper and tin ore, and slag (the stuff that’s left over when metal is extracted from ore). That suggested that a lot of smelting and bronze-casting happened in this part of the city. Based on the size of the city and the area apparently set aside for metalworking, Semiyarka boasted what Radivojevic and her colleagues call “a highly-organized, possibly limited or controlled, industry of this sought-after alloy.”

Bronze was part of everyday life for people on the ancient steppes, making up everything from ax heads to jewelry. There’s a reason the period from 2000 BCE to 500 BCE (mileage may vary depending on location) is called the Bronze Age, after all. But the archaeological record has offered almost no evidence of where all those bronze doodads found on the Eurasian steppe were made or who was doing the work of mining, smelting, and casting. That makes Semiyarka a rare and important glimpse into how the Bronze Age was, literally, made.

Radivojevic and her colleagues expected to find traces of earthworks or the buried foundations of mud-brick walls, similar to the earthworks in the northwest, marking the site of a big, centralized bronze-smithing workshop. But the geophysical surveys found no walls at all in the southeastern part of the city.

“This area revealed few features,” they wrote in their recent paper (archaeologists refer to buildings and walls as features), “suggesting that metallurgical production may have been dispersed or occurred in less architecturally formalized spaces.” In other words, the bronzesmiths of ancient Semiyarka seem to have worked in the open air, or in a scattering of smaller, less permanent buildings that didn’t leave a trace behind. But they all seem to have done their work in the same area of the city.

Connections between nomads and city-dwellers

East of the earthworks lies a wide area with no trace of walls or foundations beneath the ground, but with a scattering of ancient artifacts lying half-buried in the grass. The long-forgotten objects may mark the sites of “more ephemeral, perhaps seasonal, occupation,” Radivojevic and her colleagues suggested in their recent paper.

That area makes up a large chunk of the city’s estimated 140 hectares, raising questions about how many people lived here permanently, how many stopped here along trade routes or pastoral migrations, and what their relationship was like.

A few broken potsherds offer evidence that the settled city-dwellers of Semiyarka traded regularly with their more mobile neighbors on the steppe.

Within the city, most of the ceramics match the style of the Alekseevka-Sargary people. But a few of the potsherds unearthed in Semiyarka are clearly the handiwork of nomadic Cherkaskul potters, who lived on this same wide sea of grass from around 1600 BCE to 1250 BCE. It makes sense that they would have traded with the people in the city.

Along the nearby Irtysh River, archaeologists have found faint traces of several small encampments, dating to around the same time as Semiyarka’s heyday, and two burial mounds stand north of the city. Archaeologists will have to dig deeper, literally and figuratively, to piece together how Semiyarka fit into the ancient landscape.

The city has stories to tell, not just about itself but about the whole vast, open steppe and its people.

Antiquity, 2025. DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2025.10244 (About DOIs).

Kiona is a freelance science journalist and resident archaeology nerd at Ars Technica.

First revealed in spy photos, a Bronze Age city emerges from the steppe Read More »

Rocket Report: SpaceX’s next-gen booster fails; Pegasus will fly again

atlas v, blue origin, china, falcon 9, long march 2f, new glenn, Northrop Grumman, pythom, rocket lab, rocket report, saab, Science, shenzhou, Space, spacex, starship, super heavy, united launch alliance / Tim Belzer / November 22, 2025

With the government shutdown over, the FAA has lifted its daytime launch curfew.

Blue Origin’s New Glenn booster arrives at Port Canaveral, Florida, for the first time Tuesday aboard the “Jacklyn” landing vessel. Credit: Manuel Mazzanti/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Welcome to Edition 8.20 of the Rocket Report! For the second week in a row, Blue Origin dominated the headlines with news about its New Glenn rocket. After a stunning success November 13 with the launch and landing of the second New Glenn rocket, Jeff Bezos’ space company revealed a roadmap this week showing how engineers will supercharge the vehicle with more engines. Meanwhile, in South Texas, SpaceX took a step toward the first flight of the next-generation Starship rocket. There will be no Rocket Report next week due to the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. We look forward to resuming delivery of all the news in space lift the first week of December.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Northrop’s Pegasus rocket wins a rare contract. A startup named Katalyst Space Technologies won a $30 million contract from NASA in August to build a robotic rescue mission for the agency’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory in low-Earth orbit. Swift, in space since 2004, is a unique instrument designed to study gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the Universe. The spacecraft lacks a propulsion system and its orbit is subject to atmospheric drag, and NASA says it is “racing against the clock” to boost Swift’s orbit and extend its lifetime before it falls back to Earth. On Wednesday, Katalyst announced it selected Northrop Grumman’s air-launched Pegasus XL rocket to send the rescue craft into orbit next year.

Make this make sense … At first glance, this might seem like a surprise. The Pegasus XL rocket hasn’t flown since 2021 and has launched just once in the last six years. The solid-fueled rocket is carried aloft under the belly of a modified airliner, then released to fire payloads of up to 1,000 pounds (450 kilograms) into low-Earth orbit. It’s an expensive rocket for its size, with Northrop charging more than $25 million per launch, according to the most recent public data available; the satellites best suited to launch on Pegasus will now find much cheaper tickets to orbit on rideshare missions using SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. There are a few reasons none of this mattered much to Katalyst. First, the rescue mission must launch into a very specific low-inclination orbit to rendezvous with the Swift observatory, so it won’t be able to join one of SpaceX’s rideshare missions. Second, Northrop Grumman has parts available for one more Pegasus XL rocket, and the company might have been willing to sell the launch at a discount to clear its inventory and retire the rocket’s expensive-to-maintain L-1011 carrier aircraft. And third, smaller rockets like Rocket Lab’s Electron or Firefly’s Alpha don’t quite have the performance to place Katalyst’s rescue mission into the required orbit. (submitted by gizmo23)

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Ursa Major rakes in more cash. Aerospace and defense startup Ursa Major Technologies landed a $600 million valuation in a new fundraising round, the latest sign that investors are willing to back companies developing new rocket technology, Bloomberg reports. Colorado-based Ursa Major closed its Series E fundraising round with investments from the venture capital firms Eclipse, Woodline Partners, Principia Growth, XN, and Alsop Louie Partners. The company also secured $50 million in debt financing. Ursa Major is best known as a supplier of liquid-fueled rocket engines and solid rocket motors to power a range of commercial and government vehicles.

Hypersonic tailwinds … Ursa Major says it is positioned to provide the US industrial base with propulsion systems faster and more affordably than legacy contractors can supply. “The company will rapidly field its throttleable, storable, liquid-fueled hypersonic and space-based defense solution, as well as scale its solid rocket motor and sustained space mobility manufacturing capacity,” Ursa Major said in a press release. Its customers include BAE Systems, which will use Ursa Major’s solid rocket motors to power tactical military-grade rockets, and Stratolaunch, which uses Ursa Major’s liquid-fueled Hadley engine for its hypersonic Talon-A spaceplane.

Rocket Lab celebrates two launches in 48 hours. Rocket Lab launched a payload for an undisclosed commercial customer Thursday, just hours after the company announced plans for the launch, Space News reports. The launch from Rocket Lab’s primary spaceport in New Zealand used the company’s Electron rocket, but officials released little more information on the mission, other than its nickname: “Follow My Speed.” An artist’s illustration on the mission patch indicated the payload might have been the next in a line of Earth-imaging satellites from the remote sensing company BlackSky, although the firm’s previous satellites have not launched with such secrecy.

Two hemispheres … Thursday’s launch from the Southern Hemisphere came just two days after Rocket Lab’s previous mission lifted off from Wallops Island, Virginia. That flight was a suborbital launch to support a hypersonic technology demonstration for the Defense Innovation Unit and the Missile Defense Agency. All told, Rocket Lab has now launched 18 Electron rockets this year with 100 percent mission success, a company record.

Spanish startup makes a big reveal. The Spanish company PLD Space released photos of a test version of its Miura 5 rocket Thursday, calling it a “decisive step forward in the orbital launcher validation campaign.” The full-scale qualification unit, called QM1, will allow engineers to complete subsystem testing under “real conditions” to ensure the rocket’s reliability before its first mission scheduled for 2026. The first stage of the qualification unit will undergo a full propellant loading test, while the second stage will undergo a destructive test in the United States to validate the rocket’s range safety destruct system. Miura 5 is designed to deliver a little more than a metric ton (2,200 pounds) of payload to low-Earth orbit.

Still a long way to go … “Presenting our first integrated Miura 5 unit is proof that our model works: vertical integration, proprietary infrastructure and a philosophy based on testing, learning, and improving,” said Raúl Torres, CEO and co-founder of PLD Space. The reveal, however, is just the first step in a qualification campaign that takes more than a year for most rocket companies. PLD Space aims to go much faster, with plans to complete a second qualification rocket by the end of December and unveil its first flight rocket in the first quarter of next year. “This unprecedented development cadence in Europe reinforces PLD Space’s position as the company that has developed an orbital launcher in the shortest time–just two years–whilst meeting the highest quality standards,” the company said in a statement. This would be a remarkable achievement, but history suggests PLD Space has a steep climb in the months ahead. (submitted by Leika and EllPeaTea)

Sweden digs deep in pursuit of sovereign launch. In an unsettled world, many nations are eager to develop homegrown rockets to place their own satellites into orbit. These up-and-coming spacefaring nations see it as a strategic imperative to break free from total reliance on space powers like Russia, China, and the United States. Still, some decisions are puzzling. This week, the Swedish aerospace and defense contractor Saab announced a $10 million investment in a company named Pythom. If you’re not familiar with this business, allow me to link back to a 2022 story published by Ars about Pythom’s questionable safety practices. The company has kept quiet since then, until the name surprisingly popped up again in a press release from Saab, a firm with a reputation that seems to be diametrically opposed to that of Pythom.

Just enough … The statement from Saab suggests its $10 million contribution to Pythom will make it the “lead investor” in the company’s recent funding round. Pythom hasn’t said anything more about this funding round, but Saab said the investment will accelerate Pythom’s “development and deployment of its launch systems,” which include an initial rocket capable of putting up to 330 pounds (150 kilograms) of payload into low-Earth orbit. $10 million may be just enough to keep Pythom afloat for a couple more years but is far less than the money Pythom would need to get serious about fielding an orbital launcher. Pythom is headquartered in California, but it has Swedish roots. It was founded by the Swedish married couple Tina and Tom Sjögren. The company has a couple dozen employees, and a handful of them are based in Sweden, according to Pythom’s website. (submitted by Leika and EllPeaTea)

China is about to launch an astronaut lifeboat. China is set to launch an uncrewed Shenzhou spacecraft to the Tiangong space station to provide the Shenzhou 21 astronauts with a means of returning home, Space News reports. The launch of China’s Shenzhou 22 mission is scheduled for Monday night, US time, aboard a Long March 2F rocket. Instead of carrying astronauts, the ship will ferry cargo to the Chinese Tiangong space station. More importantly, it will provide a safe ride home for the three astronauts living and working aboard the orbiting outpost.

How did we get here? … The Shenzhou 20 spacecraft currently docked to the Tiangong station was damaged by a suspected piece of space junk, cracking its window and rendering it unable to meet China’s safety standards for returning astronauts to Earth. The damage discovery occurred just before three outgoing crew members were supposed to ride Shenzhou 20 home earlier this month. Instead, those three astronauts departed the station and returned to Earth on the newer, undamaged Shenzhou 21 spacecraft. That left the other three crew members on Tiangong with only the damaged Shenzhou 20 spacecraft to get them home in the event of an emergency. Shenzhou 22 will replace Shenzhou 20, providing a lifeboat for the rest of the crew’s six-month stay in space. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Atlas V launches for Viasat. United Launch Alliance launched its Atlas V rocket on November 13 with a satellite for the California-based communications company Viasat, Spaceflight Now reports. The launch came a week after the mission was scrubbed due to a faulty liquid oxygen tank vent valve on the Atlas booster. ULA rolled the rocket back to the Vertical Integration Facility, replaced it with a new valve, and returned the rocket to the pad on November 12. The launch the following day was successful, with the Atlas V’s Centaur upper stage deploying the ViaSat-3 F2 spacecraft into a geosynchronous transfer orbit nearly three-and-a-half hours after liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

End of an era … This was the final launch of an Atlas V rocket with a payload heading for geosynchronous orbit. These are the kinds of missions the Atlas V was designed for more than 25 years ago, but the market has changed. All of the Atlas V’s remaining 11 missions will target low-Earth orbit carrying broadband satellites for Amazon or Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft heading for the International Space Station. The Atlas V will be retired in the coming years in favor of ULA’s new Vulcan rocket.

SpaceX launches key climate change monitor. SpaceX launched a joint NASA-European environmental research satellite early Monday, the second in an ongoing billion-dollar project to measure long-term changes in sea level, a key indicator of climate change, CBS News reports. The first satellite, known as Sentinel-6 and named in honor of NASA climate researcher Michael Freilich, was launched in November 2020. The latest spacecraft, Sentinel-6B, was launched from California atop a Falcon 9 rocket this week. Both satellites are equipped with a sophisticated cloud-penetrating radar. By timing how long it takes beams to bounce back from the ocean 830 miles (1,336 kilometers) below, the Sentinel-6 satellites can track sea levels to an accuracy of about one inch while also measuring wave height and wind speeds. The project builds on earlier missions dating back to the early 1990s that have provided an uninterrupted stream of sea level data.

FAA restrictions lifted … The Federal Aviation Administration lifted a restriction on commercial space operations this week that limited launches and reentries to the late night and early morning hours, Spaceflight Now reports. The FAA imposed a daytime curfew on commercial launches as it struggled to maintain air traffic control during the recent government shutdown. Those restrictions, which did not affect government missions, were lifted Monday. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Blue Origin’s New Glenn will grow larger. One week after the successful second launch of its large New Glenn booster, Blue Origin revealed a road map on Thursday for upgrades to the rocket, including a new variant with more main engines and a super-heavy lift capability, Ars reports. These upgrades to the rocket are “designed to increase payload performance and launch cadence, while enhancing reliability,” the company said in an update published on its website. The enhancements will be phased in over time, starting with the third launch of New Glenn, which is likely to occur during the first half of 2026.

No timelines … The most significant part of the update concerned an evolution of New Glenn that will transform the booster into a super-heavy lift launch vehicle. The first stage of this evolved vehicle will have nine BE-4 engines instead of seven, and the upper stage will have four BE-3U engines instead of two. In its update, Blue Origin refers to the new vehicle as 9×4 and the current variant as 7×2, a reference to the number of engines in each stage. “New Glenn 9×4 is designed for a subset of missions requiring additional capacity and performance,” the company said. “The vehicle carries over 70 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, over 14 metric tons direct to geosynchronous orbit, and over 20 metric tons to trans-lunar injection. Additionally, the 9×4 vehicle will feature a larger 8.7-meter fairing.” The company did not specify a timeline for the debut of the 9×4 variant. A spokesperson for the company told Ars, “We aren’t disclosing a specific timeframe today. The iterative design from our current 7×2 vehicle means we can build this rocket quickly.”

Recently landed New Glenn returns to port. Blue Origin welcomed “Never Tell Me the Odds” back to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, on Thursday, where the rocket booster launched exactly one week prior, Florida Today reports. The New Glenn’s first stage booster landed on Blue Origin’s offshore recovery barge, which returned it to Port Canaveral on Tuesday with great fanfare. Blue Origin’s founder, Jeff Bezos, rode the barge into port, posing for photos with the rocket and waving to onlookers viewing the spectacle from a nearby public pier. The rocket was lowered horizontally late Wednesday morning, as spectators watched alongside the restaurants and fishing boats at the port.

Through the gates … Officials from Blue Origin guided the 188-foot-long New Glenn booster to the Space Force station Thursday, making Blue Origin the only company besides SpaceX to return a space-flown booster through the gates. Once back at Blue Origin’s hangar, the rocket will undergo inspections and refurbishment for a second flight, perhaps early next year. “I could not be more excited to see the New Glenn launch, and Blue Origin recover that booster and bring it back,” Col. Brian Chatman, commander of Space Launch Delta 45, told Florida Today. “It’s all part of our certification process and campaign to certify more national security space launch providers, launch carriers, to get our most crucial satellites up on orbit.”

Meanwhile, down at Starbase. SpaceX rolled the first of its third-generation Super Heavy boosters out of the factory at Starbase, Texas, this week for a road trip to a nearby test site, according to NASASpaceflight.com. The booster rode SpaceX’s transporter from the factory a few miles down the road to Massey’s Test Site, where technicians prepared the rocket for cryogenic proof testing. However, during the initial phases of testing, the booster failed early on Friday morning.

Tumbling down … At the Starship launch site, ground teams are busy tearing down the launch mount at Pad 1, the departure point for all of SpaceX’s Starships to date. SpaceX will upgrade the pad for its next-generation, more powerful Super Heavy boosters, while Starship V3’s initial flights will take off from Pad 2, a few hundred meters away from Pad 1.

Next three launches

Nov. 22: Falcon 9 | Starlink 6-79 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 06: 59 UTC

Nov. 23: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-30 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 08: 00 UTC

Nov. 25: Long March 2F | Shenzhou 22 | Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China | 04: 11 UTC

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

Rocket Report: SpaceX’s next-gen booster fails; Pegasus will fly again Read More »

AI trained on bacterial genomes produces never-before-seen proteins

AI, bacteria, Biology, Computer science, evolution, Genomics, large language model, Science / Kris Guyer / November 21, 2025

The researchers argue that this setup lets Evo “link nucleotide-level patterns to kilobase-scale genomic context.” In other words, if you prompt it with a large chunk of genomic DNA, Evo can interpret that as an LLM would interpret a query and produce an output that, in a genomic sense, is appropriate for that interpretation.

The researchers reasoned that, given the training on bacterial genomes, they could use a known gene as a prompt, and Evo should produce an output that includes regions that encode proteins with related functions. The key question is whether it would simply output the sequences for proteins we know about already, or whether it would come up with output that’s less predictable.

Novel proteins

To start testing the system, the researchers prompted it with fragments of the genes for known proteins and determined whether Evo could complete them. In one example, if given 30 percent of the sequence of a gene for a known protein, Evo was able to output 85 percent of the rest. When prompted with 80 percent of the sequence, it could return all of the missing sequence. When a single gene was deleted from a functional cluster, Evo could also correctly identify and restore the missing gene.

The large amount of training data also ensured that Evo correctly identified the most important regions of the protein. If it made changes to the sequence, they typically resided in the areas of the protein where variability is tolerated. In other words, its training had enabled the system to incorporate the rules of evolutionary limits on changes in known genes.

So, the researchers decided to test what happened when Evo was asked to output something new. To do so, they used bacterial toxins, which are typically encoded along with an anti-toxin that keeps the cell from killing itself whenever it activates the genes. There are a lot of examples of these out there, and they tend to evolve rapidly as part of an arms race between bacteria and their competitors. So, the team developed a toxin that was only mildly related to known ones, and had no known antitoxin, and fed its sequence to Evo as a prompt. And this time, they filtered out any responses that looked similar to known antitoxin genes.

AI trained on bacterial genomes produces never-before-seen proteins Read More »

Chris Hemsworth and dad fight Alzheimer’s with a trip down memory lane

Alzheimer's disease, Chris Hemsworth, culture, Disney Plus, Hulu, National Geographic, Science, science documentaries / Tim Belzer / November 21, 2025

Millions of people around the world are living with the harsh reality of Alzheimer’s disease, which also significantly impacts family members. Nobody is immune, as A-list actor Chris Hemsworth discovered when his own father was recently diagnosed. The revelation inspired Hemsworth to embark on a trip down memory lane with his father, which took them to Australia’s Northern Territory. The experience was captured on film for A Road Trip to Remember, a new documentary film from National Geographic.

Director Tom Barbor-Might had worked with Hemsworth on the latter’s documentary series Limitless, also for National Geographic. Each episode of Limitless follows Hemsworth on a unique challenge to push himself to the limits, augmented with interviews with scientific experts on such practices as fasting, extreme temperatures, brain-boosting, and regulating one’s stress response. Barbor-Might directed the season 1 finale, “Acceptance,” which was very different in tone, dealing with the inevitability of death and the need to confront one’s own mortality.

“It was really interesting to see Chris in that more intimate personal space, and he was great at it,” Barbor-Might told Ars. “He was charming, emotional, and vulnerable, and it was really moving. It felt like there was more work to be done there.” When Craig Hemsworth received his Alzheimer’s diagnosis, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to explore that personal element further.

Hemsworth found a scientific guide for this journey in Suraj Samtani, a clinical psychologist at the New South Wales Center for Healthy Brain Aging who specializes in dementia. Recent research has shown that one’s risk of dementia can be reduced by half by maintaining regular social interactions, and, even after a diagnosis, fostering strong social connections can slow cognitive decline. Revisiting past experiences, including visiting locations from one’s past, can also boost cognition in those with early onset dementia or Alzheimer’s—hence the Hemsworth road trip.

The first stage was to re-create the Melbourne family home from the 1990s. “The therapeutic practice of reminiscence therapy gave the film not only its intellectual and emotional underpinning, it gave it its structure,” said Barbor-Might. “We wanted to really explore this and also, as an audience, get a glimpse of their family life in the 1990s. It was a sequence that felt really important. The owner extraordinarily agreed to let us revert [the house]. They went and lived in a hotel for a month and were very, very noble and accommodating.”

Chris Hemsworth and dad fight Alzheimer’s with a trip down memory lane Read More »

Scientists found the key to accurate Maya eclipse tables

archaeoastronomy, Archaeology, Maya calendar, Mayan culture, Science / Tim Belzer / November 20, 2025

The Mayan calendars were maintained by specialists known as “daykeepers,” a cultural tradition that continues today. There is general consensus that eclipses were important to the Maya. “They were tracking them, they had rituals around [eclipses], and it was built into their system of belief, ” Lowry told Ars. “So we know the eclipse table is part of the cultural knowledge of the time. We were just trying to figure out how the table came to be in its current state.”

A predictive mechanism

Lowry and Justeson’s analysis involved mathematically modeling the eclipse predictions in the Dresden Codex table and comparing the results to a historical NASA database. They focused on 145 solar eclipses that would have been visible in the Maya geographical region between 350 and 1150 CE.

First publication in 1810 by Humboldt, who repainted five pages for his atlas — First publication in 1810 by Alexander von Humboldt, who repainted five pages for his atlas. Credit: Public domain

They concluded that the codex’s eclipse tables evolved from a more general table of successive lunar months. The length of a 405-month lunar cycle (11,960 days) aligned much better with a 260-day calendar (46 x 260 =11,960) than with solar or lunar eclipse cycles. This suggests that the Maya daykeepers figured out that 405 new moons almost always came out equivalent to 46 260-day periods, knowledge the Maya used to accurately predict the dates of full and new moons over 405 successive lunar dates.

The daykeepers also realized that solar eclipses seemed to recur on or near the same day in their 260-day calendar and, over time, figured out how to predict days on which a solar eclipse might occur locally. “An eclipse happens only on a new moon,” said Lowry. “The fact that it has to be a new moon means that if you can accurately predict a new moon, you can accurately predict a one-in-seven chance of an eclipse. That’s why it makes sense that the Maya are revising lunar predicting models to have an accurate eclipse, because they don’t have to predict where the moon is relative to the ecliptic.”

The Maya also understood that they had to adjust their tables occasionally to account for slippage over time. “When we talk about accuracy, sometimes we think about being able to predict something down to the microsecond,” said Lowry, pointing to NASA records. “The Maya have a very accurate calendar, but they’re predicting to the day, not down to the second.”

Scientists found the key to accurate Maya eclipse tables Read More »

Flying with whales: Drones are remaking marine mammal research

Drones, marine life, marine mammals, marine research, Science, syndication, Tech, whales / Tim Belzer / November 20, 2025

In 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, causing one of the largest marine oil spills ever. In the aftermath of the disaster, whale scientist Iain Kerr traveled to the area to study how the spill had affected sperm whales, aiming specialized darts at the animals to collect pencil eraser-sized tissue samples.

It wasn’t going well. Each time his boat approached a whale surfacing for air, the animal vanished beneath the waves before he could reach it. “I felt like I was playing Whac-A-Mole,” he says.

As darkness fell, a whale dove in front of Kerr and covered him in whale snot. That unpleasant experience gave Kerr, who works at the conservation group Ocean Alliance, an idea: What if he could collect that same snot by somehow flying over the whale? Researchers can glean much information from whale snot, including the animal’s DNA sequence, its sex, whether it is pregnant, and the makeup of its microbiome.

After many experiments, Kerr’s idea turned into what is today known as the SnotBot: a drone fitted with six petri dishes that collect a whale’s snot by flying over the animal as it surfaces and exhales through its blowhole. Today, drones like this are deployed to gather snot all over the world, and not just from sperm whales: They’re also collecting this scientifically valuable mucus from other species, such as blue whales and dolphins. “I would say drones have changed my life,” says Kerr.

S’not just mucus

Gathering snot is one of many ways that drones are being used to study whales. In the past 10 to 15 years, drone technology has made great strides, becoming affordable and easy to use. This has been a boon for researchers. Scientists “are finding applications for drones in virtually every aspect of marine mammal research,” says Joshua Stewart, an ecologist at the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University.

Flying with whales: Drones are remaking marine mammal research Read More »

NASA really wants you to know that 3I/ATLAS is an interstellar comet

3I/ATLAS, astronomy, comet, planetary science, Science / Kris Guyer / November 19, 2025

The HiRISE camera, meant to image Mars’ surface, was repurposed to capture 3I/ATLAS. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

As eccentricity continues to rise from there, the question shifts from “what shape is its trajectory?” to “how much does the Sun alter its path through the Solar System?” For 3I/Atlas, with an eccentricity of over six, the answer is “not very much at all.” The object has approached the inner Solar System along a reasonable approximation of a straight line, experienced a gentle bend around the Sun near Mars’ orbit, and now will be zipping straight out of the Solar System again.

So, the object clearly did not originate here, which means getting a better look at it is a high priority. Unfortunately, 3I/ATLAS’s closest approach to Earth’s orbit happened when it was on the far side of the Sun from Earth. We’ve been getting closer to it since, but the hardware that got the best views was all orbiting Mars and is designed largely to point down. NASA’s Nicky Fox, the associate administrator for Science, praised the operators for getting NASA’s hardware “pushed beyond their designed capabilities” when imaging the object.

That includes using the MAVEN mission (designed to study Mars’ atmosphere) to get spectral information, and the HiRISE camera, which captured the image below. Other images came from a solar observatory and two separate missions that are on their way to visit asteroids. Other hardware that can normally image objects like this, such as the Hubble and JWST, pivoted to image 3I/ATLAS as well.

What we now know

Hubble has gotten the best view of 3I/ATLAS; its data suggests that the comet is, at most, just a couple of kilometers across. It doesn’t show much variability over time, suggesting that, if it’s rotating, it’s doing so very slowly. It has shown some differences as it warmed up, first producing a jet of material on its side facing the Sun before radiation pressure pushed that behind it to form a tail. There is some indication that, as we saw during the Rosetta mission’s visit to one of our Solar System’s comets, most of the material may be jetting out of distinct “hotspots” on the comet’s surface.

NASA really wants you to know that 3I/ATLAS is an interstellar comet Read More »