Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: space

Parabolic flight test shows lasers can propel graphene aerogels in microgravity

Lasers could one day steer solar sails and adjust a satellite’s position in outer space, thanks to graphene. An experiment on a gravity rollercoaster ride showed how this innovative material has the potential to revolutionize propulsion beyond Earth.

An international research team boarded ESA’s 86th parabolic flight campaign in May 2025 with ultralight graphene aerogels, then hit them with light during zero gravity phases to observe their reaction under space-like conditions.

The effect of the laser during the microgravity phases was startling: The graphene samples shot forward instantly.

Physicists trace the sun’s magnetic engine, 200,000 kilometers below its surface

Every eleven years, the sun’s magnetic field flips. Sunspots—dark, cooler regions on the sun’s surface that mark intense magnetic activity and often trigger solar eruptions—appear at mid-latitudes and migrate toward the star’s equator in a butterfly-shape pattern before fading as the cycle resets. While this spectacle on the star’s surface has long been visible to astronomers, where this powerful cycle begins inside the star has remained hidden until now.

Researchers at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) have analyzed nearly three decades of solar oscillation data to trace the sun’s interior dynamics, and have now pointed to the likely location of the star’s magnetic engine deep beneath its surface: roughly 200,000 kilometers down, about the length of stacking 16 Earths end to end.

The findings, published in Scientific Reports, provide one of the clearest observational windows yet into the sun’s magnetic engine—the solar dynamo—shedding light on hidden forces shaping space weather patterns linked to the solar cycle, not only on Earth’s nearest star, but potentially on other stars across the galaxy.

Early Data from NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory Reveals Over 11,000 New Asteroids

Scientists at NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, jointly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, have submitted an unprecedented set of asteroid detections to the IAU Minor Planet Center, including hundreds of distant worlds beyond Neptune and 33 previously unknown near-Earth asteroids.

Using preliminary data from NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, scientists have discovered over 11,000 new asteroids [1]. The data were confirmed by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center (MPC), making this the largest single batch of asteroid discoveries submitted in the past year. The discoveries were made using data from Rubin’s early optimization surveys and offer a powerful preview of the observatory’s transformative impact on Solar System science.

Rubin Observatory is a joint program of NSF NOIRLab and DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, who cooperatively operate Rubin. NOIRLab is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA).

A galaxy next door is transforming, and astronomers can see it happening

The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is one of the Milky Way’s closest galactic neighbors—a small, gas-rich galaxy visible to the naked eye from the southern hemisphere, and bound to our galaxy by gravity, alongside its companion, the Large Magellanic Cloud (1¹LMC). All three galaxies have been interacting for hundreds of millions of years.

The SMC is also one of the most studied galaxies in the sky. Astronomers have catalogued its stars, mapped its gas and tracked its motion for more than half a century. Yet a basic question about it has remained. The galaxy’s stars do not orbit around its center the way stars in most galaxies do, and it has been challenging to explain why.

Collision reveals a galaxy in flux In a study published in The Astrophysical Journal, University of Arizona astronomers have traced the lack of rotation in stars to a direct collision between the SMC and its larger companion, the LMC. The findings also raise questions about how scientists use the SMC as a reference point for understanding galaxies across the history of the universe.

Two’s company: Scientists identify new class of star remnants

In about 5 to 8 billion years, our sun is expected to evolve into a white dwarf—an extremely dense, Earth-sized stellar remnant that has exhausted its fuel and shed its outer layer. But while our sun is a solitary star, research over the past 15 years has demonstrated that binary or multi-star systems are far more common than astronomers once thought. When a dense and compact remnant like a white dwarf is involved in a binary system, it often “snatches away” material from its companion star. This process, called accretion, usually emits X-rays in what is considered a “signature” signal.

Now, scientists from the group of Ilaria Caiazzo, assistant professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), confirm the detection of an X-ray signal in not just one, but two isolated objects called Gandalf and Moon-Sized. Highly magnetic and rapidly rotating, these two objects are called “merger remnants” as they each formed as a result of a violent cosmic collision. By emitting X-rays in the absence of a companion, they now form a new class of their own.

The most pristine star yet found in the known universe

An unusual team of astronomers used Sloan Digital Sky Survey-V (SDSS-V) data and observations on the Magellan telescopes at Carnegie Science’s Las Campanas Observatory in Chile to discover the most pristine star in the known universe, called SDSS J0715-7334. Their work is published in Nature Astronomy.

Led by the University of Chicago’s Alexander Ji—a former Carnegie Observatories postdoctoral fellow—and including Carnegie astrophysicist Juna Kollmeier—who leads SDSS, now in its fifth generation—the research team identified a star from just the second generation of celestial objects in the cosmos, which formed just a few billion years after the universe began.

“These pristine stars are windows into the dawn of stars and galaxies in the universe,” Ji explained. Several of his and Kollmeier’s co-authors on the paper are undergraduate students from UChicago, whom Ji brought to Las Campanas on an observing trip for spring break last year. “My first visit to LCO is where I really fell in love with astronomy, and it was special to share such a formative experience with my students.”

/* */