Lifeboat Foundation

WASHINGTON (AP) — Earth’s moon will soon have some company — a “mini moon.”

The mini moon is actually an asteroid about the size of a school bus at 33 feet (10 meters). When it whizzes by Earth on Sunday, it will be temporarily trapped by our planet’s gravity and orbit the globe — but only for about two months.

The space rock — 2024 PT5 — was first spotted in August by astronomers at Complutense University of Madrid using a powerful telescope located in Sutherland, South Africa.

How, when, and where to look to see Comet A3, also known as C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS), this Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 29–30, with sky charts.

The study of computational biology is essential to understanding this transition. By exploring how life processes information, we gain insights into the nature of consciousness and intelligence itself. Computational models are key to revealing how systems organize, adapt, and evolve toward greater complexity and self-awareness. This progression suggests a future where intelligence is no longer bound by biological limitations but extends into the realm of artificial systems, creating a symbiotic relationship between humans and machines.

Ultimately, NOOGENESIS challenges traditional scientific paradigms by framing the universe as an informational “self-simulating” entity, where consciousness plays a central role in its evolutionary processes. The origins of life, the evolution of intelligence, and the potential for a post-Singularity future are all part of this grand narrative. By embracing this view, we can cultivate a more comprehensive understanding of the universe and our place within it—one that recognizes the fundamental role of consciousness in shaping reality and guiding evolution toward the apotheosis of Omega Singularity, the final convergence of intelligence and complexity.

Billions of years ago, Mars is hypothesized to have been a much warmer and wetter planet featuring active volcanoes and vast liquid water oceans. However, something happened that caused the Red Planet to become the cold and dry world we see and explore today, but where did its atmosphere go? This is what a recent study published in Science Advances hopes to address as a team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) investigated how the large amounts of carbon that once existed in Mars’ atmosphere could now exist in the clay across the planet’s surface. This study holds the potential to help scientists better understand the formation and evolution of Mars and what that means in the search for life on the Red Planet, and beyond Earth.

For the study, the researchers calculated the amount of carbon storage within clays that potentially existed during what’s known as the Noachian Period on Mars, or between approximately 3.6 to 4 billion years ago. Their hypothesis is that when liquid water existed on the Red Planet, this water could have seeped its way into rocks, resulting in carbon dioxide being removed from the atmosphere and being converted into methane. In the end, the researchers calculated that the clays on Mars could potentially be housing up to 1.7 bar of carbon dioxide, or just over one standard atmosphere’s worth of carbon dioxide and approximately 80 percent of Mars’ ancient atmosphere.

“Based on our findings on Earth, we show that similar processes likely operated on Mars, and that copious amounts of atmospheric CO₂ could have transformed to methane and been sequestered in clays,” said Dr. Oliver Jagoutz, who is a professor of geology in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) and the sole co-author on the study. “This methane could still be present and maybe even used as an energy source on Mars in the future.”

A new study has mapped out the gravitational basins of attraction in the local universe, offering fresh insights into the large-scale cosmic structures that shape the movement of galaxies. The study has been published in Nature Astronomy.

An international team of astronomers reports the discovery of a new extrasolar world orbiting a nearby star known as HD 86728. This is the first exoplanet detection made as part of the NEID Earth Twin Survey (NETS). The finding was detailed in a research paper published September 18 on the pre-print server arXiv.

Solar wind is a never-ending stream of charged particles coming from the sun. Rather than a constant breeze, this wind is rather gusty. As solar wind particles travel through space, they interact with the sun’s variable magnetic field, creating chaotic and fluctuating motion known as turbulence.

In May 2024, a geomagnetic storm hit Earth, sending auroras across the planet’s skies in a once-in-a-generation light display. These dazzling sights are possible because of the interaction of coronal mass ejections – explosions of plasma and magnetic field from the Sun – with Earth’s magnetic field, which protects us from the radiation the Sun spits out during turbulent storms.

But what might happen to humans beyond the safety of Earth’s protection? This question is essential as NASA plans to send humans to the Moon and on to Mars. During the May storm, the small spacecraft BioSentinel was collecting data to learn more about the impacts of radiation in deep space.

“We wanted to take advantage of the unique stage of the solar cycle we’re in – the solar maximum, when the Sun is at its most active – so that we can continue to monitor the space radiation environment,” said Sergio Santa Maria, principal investigator for BioSentinel’s spaceflight mission at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. “These data are relevant not just to the heliophysics community but also to understand the radiation environment for future crewed missions into deep space.”

Earth will get a “second moon” this weekend, but it won’t be sticking around for long.