The United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft lifts off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, U.S.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

From finding traces of carbon dioxide and methane on an alien planet to discovering tiny jellyfish that can learn from experience, find all the latest news, discoveries and findings that happened in the field of science this week.

What will ‘cosmic detective’ OSIRIS-REx bring back?

Debris from an alien world will land on the Earth on September 24. NASA’s asteroid-hunting spacecraft OSIRIS-REx – short for Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer – will drop a capsule containing pristine asteroid material in the Utah desert. OSIRIS-REx, which is currently winging its way towards the earth after a close encounter with Bennu, a near-earth asteroid (NEA), “is a cosmic detective.” Many scientists believe that along with comets, carbon-rich asteroids like Bennu may have seeded the earth with primordial life as they smashed into the young planet more than four billion years ago.

No signals from Vikram and Pragyan, says ISRO

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which was hoping to awaken the Chandrayaan-3’s Vikram lander and Pragyan rover on Friday, says it has not received any signals from either of the two, despite continuing efforts to establish communications. On September 2, the rover was put into sleep mode; two days later, on September 4, the lander was also put to sleep, following the end of one lunar day.

Astronomers have found carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere of an alien world

Scientists in the United Kingdom and the United States have just reported some very interesting chemical traces in the atmosphere of a planet called K2-18b, which is about 124 light-years from Earth. In particular, they may have detected a substance which on Earth is only produced by living things. The new study found a lot of carbon dioxide and methane. This is interesting as this is like what is found on Earth, Mars, and Venus in our Solar System – rather than Neptune. The only process we know that creates dimethyl sulfide on our planet is life. In particular, marine life and plankton emit it in the form of flatulence.

Genomic clues suggest humans’ ancestors nearly went extinct 9L years ago

In a recent paper in Science, researchers from China used a new computational technique to analyse about 3,000 present-day human genomes from 10 African and 40 non-African populations. They concluded that the modern human population likely originated only from about 1,200 founding ancestors from a bottleneck. The finding challenges previous estimates that predicted this number to be about 100,000. The scientists also found that our ancestors went through this bottleneck about 900,000 years ago and that the drastic reduction lasted for over 100,000 years.

Six out of nine planetary boundaries breached

A recent study published in Science Advances found that human activities have pushed the Earth past the ‘safe limits’ in six of nine planetary boundaries, which scientists have used to measure the planet’s health. Crossing the ninth boundary could be altogether disastrous, jeopardising the precarious balance of the earth’s ecosystems. The nine planetary boundaries are climate change, deforestation, biodiversity loss, synthetic chemicals and plastics, freshwater depletion, nitrogen loss, ocean acidification, particle pollution, and dust in the atmosphere and ozone depletion.

Tiny jellyfish can learn from experience

The Caribbean box jellyfish, or Tripedalia cystophora, is known to be able to navigate through murky water and a maze of submerged mangrove roots. Despite this considerable disadvantage, the Caribbean box jellyfish responds to what is called “operant conditioning”. These gelatinous, fingernail-sized creatures are capable of learning from visual cues to avoid swimming into obstacles — a cognitive ability never before seen in animals with such a primitive nervous system. Their performance of what is called “associative learning” is comparable to far more advanced animals such as fruit flies or mice, which have the notable benefit of having a brain.

In a first, RNA is recovered from extinct Tasmanian tiger

The Tasmanian tiger, a dog-sized striped carnivorous marsupial also called the thylacine, once roamed the Australian continent and adjacent islands, an apex predator that hunted kangaroos and other prey. In a scientific first, researchers said on Tuesday they have recovered RNA – genetic material present in all living cells that has structural similarities to DNA – from the desiccated skin and muscle of a Tasmanian tiger stored since 1891 at a museum in Stockholm. While not the focus of this research, the ability to extract, sequence and analyse old RNA could boost efforts by other scientists toward recreating extinct species.

This image from video provided by the Indian Space Research Organisation shows the surface of the moon as the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft prepares for landing on Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2023. India became the first country to land a spacecraft near the moon’s south pole, which scientists believe could hold vital reserves of frozen water.
| Photo Credit: AP

Indian Space Research Organisation charted history this week as Chandrayaan-3 successfully landed on the moon’s surface, making it the fourth country to do so and the only country to do so at the south pole. Find this week’s latest findings and discoveries from the field of science.

Chandrayaan-3 lands on the south pole of Moon

At 6.03 pm IST on August 23, the Chandrayaan-3 lander touched down on the moon’s surface, in the south polar region. The landing followed a 19-minute sequence in which the spacecraft used its engines, thrusters, and a suite of sensors to guide itself from an altitude of around 30 km and a speed of 1.7 km/s down to the ground. The success made India the fourth country to have soft-landed a robotic instrument on the moon and the first to have done so in the moon’s south polar region. This elite stature also boosts other countries’ confidence in the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which built, launched, and now operates the Chandrayaan-3 instruments.

Sun-observing spacecraft sheds light on the solar wind’s origin

New observations by the Solar Orbiter spacecraft may provide an answer to the origin of solar winds. Researchers have said that the spacecraft has detected numerous relatively small jets of charged particles expelled intermittently from the corona – the sun’s outer atmosphere – at supersonic speeds for 20 to 100 seconds. The jets emanate from structures on the corona called coronal holes where the sun’s magnetic field stretches into space rather than back into the star. They are called “picoflare jets” due to their relatively small size. Scientists think that these jets could actually be a major source of mass and energy to sustain the solar wind.

New findings suggest that LK-99 is probably not a superconductor

In July 2023, a group of scientists in South Korea uploaded two preprint papers claiming that a lead apatite material called LK-99 was an ambient condition superconductor. The group’s two papers elicited a mixture of surprise and scepticism in the scientific community – surprise because of the apatite, and scepticism because of the history of superconductivity. A group from India from the CSIR-National Physical Laboratory, New Delhi, was one of the first to report that it didn’t find any signs of superconductivity in LK-99. As far as current evidence suggests, LK-99 is not a superconductor.

Missed childhood TB cases impede achieving 2025 goal

With childhood TB continuing to remain a “staggering problem” in India, “eliminating” TB by 2025 might be extremely challenging. Nearly 0.34 million children <15 years of age in India are estimated to get TB disease every year. While children in this age group are estimated to contribute about 13% of the total TB caseload, only 6% are notified. As per the 2022 WHO global TB report, last year, children aged less than 15 years across the world accounted for 11% of the total estimated incident TB cases. Notwithstanding the 56% estimated TB detection gap in children globally, India contributes nearly one-third to the global childhood TB caseload.  

The ‘weird’ male Y chromosome has finally been fully sequenced

Scientists have finally been able to sequence the Y chromosome in its entirety. The findings provide a solid base to explore how genes for sex and sperm work, how the Y chromosome evolved, and whether – as predicted – it will disappear in a few million years. The Y chromosome is male-determining because it bears a gene called SRY, which directs the development of a ridge of cells into a testis in the embryo. The embryonic testes make male hormones, and these hormones direct the development of male features in a baby boy. Without a Y chromosome and a SRY gene, the same ridge of cells develops into an ovary in XX embryos.

Tropical forests may be getting too hot for photosynthesis

A small percentage of leaves on trees in tropical forests may be approaching the maximum temperature threshold for photosynthesis to work, suggests a study published in Nature. An estimated 0.01% of all leaves currently surpass this critical temperature but there are uncertainties in the range of potentially critical temperatures in tropical trees. Modelling suggests that tropical forests can withstand up to a 3.9 degree C increase over current air temperatures before a potential tipping point, therefore action is needed to protect the fate of tropical forests under future climate change.

No emperor penguin chicks survived last year due to melting of Antarctic ice

The loss of ice in one region of Antarctica last year likely resulted in none of the emperor penguin chicks surviving in four colonies, researchers said. Researchers used satellite imagery to look at breeding colonies in a region near Antarctica’s Bellingshausen Sea. The images showed no ice was left there in December during the Southern Hemisphere’s summer, as had occurred in 2021. Researchers said it is likely that no chicks survived in four of the five breeding colonies they examined. Penguin chicks don’t develop their adult waterproof feathers until close to the time they usually fledge, in late December or January, scientists say.

This image from video provided by the Indian Space Research Organisation shows the surface of the moon as the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft prepares for landing on Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2023. India became the first country to land a spacecraft near the moon’s south pole, which scientists believe could hold vital reserves of frozen water.
| Photo Credit: AP

Indian Space Research Organisation charted history this week as Chandrayaan-3 successfully landed on the moon’s surface, making it the fourth country to do so and the only country to do so in the south polar region. Find this week’s latest findings and discoveries from the field of science.

Chandrayaan-3 lands on the south pole of Moon

At 6.03 pm IST on August 23, the Chandrayaan-3 lander touched down on the moon’s surface, in the south polar region. The landing followed a 19-minute sequence in which the spacecraft used its engines, thrusters, and a suite of sensors to guide itself from an altitude of around 30 km and a speed of 1.7 km/s down to the ground. The success made India the fourth country to have soft-landed a robotic instrument on the moon and the first to have done so in the moon’s south polar region. This elite stature also boosts other countries’ confidence in the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which built, launched, and now operates the Chandrayaan-3 instruments.

Sun-observing spacecraft sheds light on the solar wind’s origin

New observations by the Solar Orbiter spacecraft may provide an answer to the origin of solar winds. Researchers have said that the spacecraft has detected numerous relatively small jets of charged particles expelled intermittently from the corona – the sun’s outer atmosphere – at supersonic speeds for 20 to 100 seconds. The jets emanate from structures on the corona called coronal holes where the sun’s magnetic field stretches into space rather than back into the star. They are called “picoflare jets” due to their relatively small size. Scientists think that these jets could actually be a major source of mass and energy to sustain the solar wind.

New findings suggest that LK-99 is probably not a superconductor

In July 2023, a group of scientists in South Korea uploaded two preprint papers claiming that a lead apatite material called LK-99 was an ambient condition superconductor. The group’s two papers elicited a mixture of surprise and scepticism in the scientific community – surprise because of the apatite, and scepticism because of the history of superconductivity. A group from India from the CSIR-National Physical Laboratory, New Delhi, was one of the first to report that it didn’t find any signs of superconductivity in LK-99. As far as current evidence suggests, LK-99 is not a superconductor.

Missed childhood TB cases impede achieving 2025 goal

With childhood TB continuing to remain a “staggering problem” in India, “eliminating” TB by 2025 might be extremely challenging. Nearly 0.34 million children <15 years of age in India are estimated to get TB disease every year. While children in this age group are estimated to contribute about 13% of the total TB caseload, only 6% are notified. As per the 2022 WHO global TB report, last year, children aged less than 15 years across the world accounted for 11% of the total estimated incident TB cases. Notwithstanding the 56% estimated TB detection gap in children globally, India contributes nearly one-third to the global childhood TB caseload.  

The ‘weird’ male Y chromosome has finally been fully sequenced

Scientists have finally been able to sequence the Y chromosome in its entirety. The findings provide a solid base to explore how genes for sex and sperm work, how the Y chromosome evolved, and whether – as predicted – it will disappear in a few million years. The Y chromosome is male-determining because it bears a gene called SRY, which directs the development of a ridge of cells into a testis in the embryo. The embryonic testes make male hormones, and these hormones direct the development of male features in a baby boy. Without a Y chromosome and a SRY gene, the same ridge of cells develops into an ovary in XX embryos.

Tropical forests may be getting too hot for photosynthesis

A small percentage of leaves on trees in tropical forests may be approaching the maximum temperature threshold for photosynthesis to work, suggests a study published in Nature. An estimated 0.01% of all leaves currently surpass this critical temperature but there are uncertainties in the range of potentially critical temperatures in tropical trees. Modelling suggests that tropical forests can withstand up to a 3.9 degree C increase over current air temperatures before a potential tipping point, therefore action is needed to protect the fate of tropical forests under future climate change.

No emperor penguin chicks survived last year due to melting of Antarctic ice

The loss of ice in one region of Antarctica last year likely resulted in none of the emperor penguin chicks surviving in four colonies, researchers said. Researchers used satellite imagery to look at breeding colonies in a region near Antarctica’s Bellingshausen Sea. The images showed no ice was left there in December during the Southern Hemisphere’s summer, as had occurred in 2021. Researchers said it is likely that no chicks survived in four of the five breeding colonies they examined. Penguin chicks don’t develop their adult waterproof feathers until close to the time they usually fledge, in late December or January, scientists say.