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First comprehensive Mars soil classification offers framework for exploration and future farming

A Ph.D. student at the University of Sydney has produced the first comprehensive classification system and map of Martian soils, creating a new framework that could help scientists compare landscapes across the Red Planet and identify promising locations for future exploration, habitation and food production.

The research, led by Daniel Irving from the Sydney Institute of Agriculture and the Faculty of Science, proposes a new term for Martian soil classes: “areths,” derived from Ares, the Greek name for Mars.

Published in the journal CATENA, the research uses orbital observations and models to classify almost 800 million locations across Mars into a hierarchy of 2,000 soil classes and presents a global map showing where they occur.

Solving the gallium anomaly: New calculation may explain neutrino shortfall without invoking new particles

Glimpses of the “gallium anomaly” were first seen in the mid-1990s, but it was first clearly discovered and stated in 2007 by neutrino physicist Carlo Giunti of Italy. The problem is simple to state but potentially very important: about 20% fewer electron neutrinos were seen to be captured by gallium nuclei than expected.

But now the anomaly looks to be explained with a new calculation by a collaboration of physicists at Italian universities and research laboratories—and the calculation agrees with the observed number of electron neutrinos captured. Their work is published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

When an electron neutrino (one of the three types of neutrinos) collides with a neutron in the nucleus of gallium-71 (⁷¹Ga), an electron is produced and the neutron transforms to a proton as a down quark converts to an up quark. The gallium nucleus then becomes a germanium-71 (⁷¹Ge) nucleus. This is a weak force interaction with a W+ particle exchange, a so-called charged-current weak interaction, and was historically important to the solar neutrino problem recognized in the 1960s.

Plants shift gene activity within minutes of entering spaceflight, experiment reveals

Plants begin responding to spaceflight almost immediately after leaving Earth, according to a new University of Florida study that captured the earliest stages of biological adaptation during a commercial suborbital mission. Published in the journal npj Microgravity, the study reports the results of an experiment conducted by a UF astronaut during Blue Origin’s New Shepard NS-26 flight on Aug. 29, 2024.

For more than two decades, UF space biologists Rob Ferl and Anna-Lisa Paul have worked together to understand how living organisms respond to spaceflight. For this study, they designed an experiment to capture biological changes during different phases of a mission.

Scientists have long studied how plants and other organisms respond after spending days, weeks or months in space. Much less has been known about the biological changes that occur during the first minutes of spaceflight and how those responses change as a mission unfolds.

AI designs working molecular scissors that recognize and cut selected protein targets

Proteases are naturally occurring enzymes that break down proteins into peptides and even single amino acids. They are useful in medicine and industrial processes, where they clean tissue, digest waste and help in the manufacture of everyday products. Now scientists have used artificial intelligence to design new versions from scratch.

AI tools have already successfully generated new protein shapes and structures, but using AI to create functional proteases is a significant leap forward. That’s because the resulting enzyme has to both recognize a chosen protein sequence and cut it efficiently.

To see if it could be done, David Baker at the University of Washington and his colleagues combined several advanced artificial intelligence tools to create both cysteine and zinc proteases.

New 3D model reveals how shadows reshape chemistry in stellar nurseries

How do young stars reshape the clouds from which they are born? A new high-resolution 3D model developed by an international team led by Dr Brandt Gaches from the University of Duisburg-Essen shows how the uneven structure of stellar nurseries creates shadows that alter their chemistry and influence the infrared emission observed by the James Webb Space Telescope. The model has now been published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Stars are born inside vast clouds of cold gas and dust. As massive young stars begin to shine, their intense ultraviolet light heats the gas, breaks apart molecules and triggers a cascade of chemical reactions in the clouds’ outer layers. These boundary zones are known as photodissociation, or photon-dominated, regions. Their light provides astronomers with important clues about how stars form and how gas is recycled to create future generations of stars and planets both within our own galaxy and in investigations of star formation across cosmological history.

“The Orion Bar is an ideal natural laboratory for studying these processes,” says Dr. Brandt Gaches. Located about 1,350 light-years from Earth, it can be observed in exceptional detail. “We see it nearly edge-on, so its different chemical layers are particularly easy to distinguish. That makes it a benchmark for testing models of photon-dominated regions,” adds Gaches, who leads an Emmy Noether Research Group on molecular astrophysics at the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE).

Infrared light overcomes mirror coating obstacle in gravitational wave detector upgrades

Researchers have developed and tested a new locking method for gravitational wave detectors that will advance the discovery of distant black holes and neutron stars colliding.

Researchers from ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav) nodes at The University of Western Australia, the Australian National University and the University of Adelaide co-authored the study published in Physical Review D.

Lead author Dr. Jian Liu, from UWA’s School of Physics, Mathematics and Computing, said gravitational wave detectors, such as LIGO, detected ripples in space-time created by colliding black holes by measuring changes in distance 1,000 times smaller than the width of a proton.

Sunlight gives biodiesel byproduct a second life as hydrogen and valuable chemicals

Australian researchers and international collaborators have demonstrated a solar-driven approach to convert glycerol, a low-value byproduct of biodiesel production, into hydrogen and higher-value chemicals. Using advanced techniques at the Australian Synchrotron, they revealed how the catalyst changed while it was working.

The study, led by researchers at the University of New South Wales, investigated a process known as photoreforming, in which light energy is used to drive chemical reactions to simultaneously produce hydrogen and transform organic feedstocks into useful products. The research was published in Applied Catalysis B: Environment and Energy.

Glycerol is produced in large quantities by the growing biodiesel industry, with approximately 100 kilograms (220 pounds) generated for every ton of biodiesel. Crude glycerol can be worth as little as US$0.11 per kilogram. Chemicals can be produced from it, such as glyceraldehyde and dihydroxyacetone, which have applications in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries and are valued at approximately US$75 and US$150 per kilogram, respectively.

New high-frequency method boosts 2D material readout for next-gen quantum computers

Quantum computers represent a next step in the fast-paced evolution of technology. Using quantum bits (qubits), they have the potential to run certain calculations exponentially faster than conventional computers. However, developing and fine-tuning quantum computers requires an enormous number of repetitive tests. To accelerate quantum technology development, we need a method that can read quantum states at ultrafast speeds.

A research team from Tohoku University and the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) has developed a method that enables ultrasensitive, high-speed charge detection in 2D-material-based quantum devices necessary to accelerate this development. It brings us one step closer to the realization of next-generation quantum computers, which could eventually revolutionize industries like medicine, logistics and cybersecurity.

A highway instead of a racetrack: Strong coupling of light and sound in an optical fiber

For the first time, scientists have achieved strong coupling between light and long-lived acoustic vibrations in an optical fiber. Optical fibers are used in both classical telecommunications and quantum communication and could serve not only as connections between computing nodes but also as quantum processors themselves in the future. The results, published in Nature Physics, pave the way for new technologies in quantum signal processing.

Mechanical and acoustic vibrations can be used to convert signals across various frequency ranges, from optical frequencies (terahertz) to microwaves (gigahertz) and even lower frequencies (megahertz or kilohertz). For instance, this capability is essential to connect multiple quantum computers operating at gigahertz frequencies via optical links. Furthermore, acoustic waves propagate at speeds significantly lower than the speed of light. So, they provide a medium capable of transporting slowly moving information—which is of great interest for data storage and the temporary buffering of information.

However, to utilize one of these processing capabilities for quantum information via mechanical vibrations, one prerequisite is needed: the strong coupling regime. This regime ensures that quantum information is exchanged before it is lost due to losses and decoherence. Decoherence describes the state in which the waves no longer oscillate in unison. In the strong coupling regime, quantum information can be processed more quickly—faster than the rate at which noise enters the system—without losing quantum properties.

World-record intensity in attosecond hard-X-ray pulses could unlock closer study of electrons in atoms and molecules

Researchers used the European XFEL to create X-ray flashes that were not only extremely short but also reached record intensity for this type of pulse. The researchers focused the X-rays to an area roughly 100,000 times smaller than the cross section of a typical human hair. This concentrated the X-ray light into a tiny but extremely powerful spot. The method could enable detailed studies of how electrons behave in atoms and molecules and, in the long term, could even allow researchers to control electrons during chemical reactions. The team has now published the results of the experiment, carried out in April 2026, in the journal Optica.

“This is a world record in intensity and fluence for a hard-X-ray attosecond pulse,” says Ichiro Inoue from the University of Tokyo, first author of the publication. Hard X-rays are light waves with a particularly short wavelength. Fluence measures how much energy this light delivers to a certain area. Intensity also takes into account how quickly that energy arrives.