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Dynamic duo of bacteria could change Mars dust into versatile building material for first human colonists

Since humanity’s first steps on the moon, the aspiration to extend human civilization beyond Earth has been a central objective of international space agencies, targeting long-term extraterrestrial habitation. Among the celestial bodies within reach, Mars is considered our next home.

The red planet, with its stark landscapes and tantalizing similarities to Earth, beckons as the frontier of human exploration and settlement. But establishing a permanent foothold on Mars remains one of humanity’s boldest dreams and the most formidable scientific and engineering challenge.

The red planet, once draped in a thick atmosphere, has undergone dramatic transformation over billions of years. Its protective blanket vanished, leaving behind an environment nearly unrecognizable to terrestrial life.

Physicists create ‘quantum wire’ where mass and energy flow without friction or loss

In physical systems, transport takes many forms, such as electric current through a wire, heat through metal, or even water through a pipe. Each of these flows can be described by how easily the underlying quantity—charge, energy, or mass—moves through a material.

Normally, collisions and friction lead to resistance causing these flows to slow down or fade away. But in a new experiment at TU Wien, scientists have observed a system where that doesn’t happen at all.

By confining thousands of rubidium atoms to move along a single line using magnetic and optical fields, they created an ultracold quantum gas in which energy and mass move with perfect efficiency. The results, now published in the journal Science, show that even after countless collisions, the flow remains stable and undiminished, thus revealing a kind of transport that defies the rules of ordinary matter.

Google deletes X post after getting caught using a ‘stolen’ AI recipe infographic

Google is facing backlash on X after a viral post for its NotebookLM appeared to use a food blogger’s work without credit.

Recently, Google launched Nano Banana Pro, its most powerful image model to date.

The model is likely trained on millions of websites and videos, which explains why it’s one of the best tools for generating realistic images.

Glassworm malware returns in third wave of malicious VS Code packages

The Glassworm campaign, which first emerged on the OpenVSX and Microsoft Visual Studio marketplaces in October, is now in its third wave, with 24 new packages added on the two platforms.

OpenVSX and the Microsoft Visual Studio Marketplace are both extension repositories for VS Code–compatible editors, used by developers to install language support, frameworks, tooling, themes, and other productivity add-ons.

The Microsoft marketplace is the official platform for Visual Studio Code, while OpenVSX is an open, vendor-neutral alternative used by editors who can’t or don’t use Microsoft’s proprietary store.

SmartTube YouTube app for Android TV breached to push malicious update

The popular open-source SmartTube YouTube client for Android TV was compromised after an attacker gained access to the developer’s signing keys, leading to a malicious update being pushed to users.

The compromise became known when multiple users reported that Play Protect, Android’s built-in antivirus module, blocked SmartTube on their devices and warned them of a risk.

The developer of SmartTube, Yuriy Yuliskov, admitted that his digital keys were compromised late last week, leading to the injection of malware into the app.

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