An anonymous reader shared this report from the BBC: There is growing controversy over recent evidence suggesting that a mysterious force known as dark energy might be changing in a way that challenges our current understanding of time and space. An analysis by a South Korean team has hinted that, rather than the Universe continuing to expand, galaxies could be pulled back together by gravity, ending in what astronomers call a "Big Crunch".

The scientists involved believe that they may be on the verge of one of the biggest discoveries in astronomy for a generation. Other astronomers have questioned these findings, but these critics have not been able to completely dismiss the South Korean team's assertions...

The controversy began in March with unexpected results from an instrument on a telescope in the Arizona desert called the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (Desi)... The data hinted that acceleration of the galaxies had changed over time, something not in line with the standard picture, according to Prof Ofer Lehav of University College London, who is involved with the Desi project. "Now with this changing dark energy going up and then down, again, we need a new mechanism. And this could be a shake up for the whole of physics," he says. Then in November the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) published research from a South Korean team that seems to back the view that the weirdness of dark energy is weirder still.

Prof Young Wook Lee of Yonsei University in Seoul and his team went back to the kind of supernova data that first revealed dark energy 27 years ago. Instead of treating these stellar explosions as having one standard brightness, they adjusted for the ages of the galaxies they came from and worked out how bright the supernovas really were. This adjustment showed that not only had dark energy changed over time, but, shockingly, that the acceleration was slowing down... If, as Prof Lee's results suggest, the force that is pushing galaxies away from each other — dark energy — is weakening, then one possibility is that it becomes so weak that gravity begins to pull the galaxies back together.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Associated Press: Two NATO-nation intelligence services suspect Russia is developing a new anti-satellite weapon to target Elon Musk's Starlink constellation with destructive orbiting clouds of shrapnel, with the aim of reining in Western space superiority that has helped Ukraine on the battlefield. Intelligence findings seen by The Associated Press say the so-called "zone-effect" weapon would seek to flood Starlink orbits with hundreds of thousands of high-density pellets, potentially disabling multiple satellites at once but also risking catastrophic collateral damage to other orbiting systems.

Analysts who haven't seen the findings say they doubt such a weapon could work without causing uncontrollable chaos in space for companies and countries, including Russia and its ally China, that rely on thousands of orbiting satellites for communications, defense and other vital needs. Such repercussions, including risks to its own space systems, could steer Moscow away from deploying or using such a weapon, analysts said. "I don't buy it. Like, I really don't," said Victoria Samson, a space-security specialist at the Secure World Foundation who leads the Colorado-based nongovernmental organization's annual study of anti-satellite systems. "I would be very surprised, frankly, if they were to do something like that." [Later they suggested the research might just be experimental.]

But the commander of the Canadian military's Space Division, Brig. Gen. Christopher Horner, said such Russian work cannot be ruled out in light of previous U.S. allegations that Russia also has been pursuing an indiscriminate nuclear, space-based weapon. "I can't say I've been briefed on that type of system. But it's not implausible," he said... The French military's Space Command said in a statement to the AP that it could not comment on the findings but said, "We can inform you that Russia has, in recent years, been multiplying irresponsible, dangerous, and even hostile actions in space."
The article also points out that this month Russia "said it has fielded a new ground-based missile system, the S-500, which is capable of hitting low-orbit targets..."

An astrophysicist at the University of Rochester writes that "many" of his colleagues in physics "have come to believe that a mystery is unfolding in every microbe, animal, and human." And it's a mystery that:

- "Challenges basic assumptions physicists have held for centuries"
- "May even help redefine the field for the next generation"
- "Could answer essential questions about AI."

In short, while physicists have favored a "reductionist" philosophy about the fundamental laws controlling the universe (energy, mattery, space, and time), "long-promised 'theories of everything' such as string theory, have not borne significant fruit: There are, however, ways other than reductionism to think about what's fundamental in the universe. Beginning in the 1980s, physicists (along with researchers in other fields) began developing new mathematical tools to study what's called "complexity" — systems in which the whole is far more than the sum of its parts. The end goal of reductionism was to explain everything in the universe as the result of particles and their interactions. Complexity, by contrast, recognizes that once lots of particles come together to produce macroscopic things — such as organisms — knowing everything about particles isn't enough to understand reality...

Physicists have always been good at capturing the essential aspects of a system and casting those essentials in the language of mathematics... Now those skills must be brought to bear on an age-old question that is only just getting its proper due: What is life? Using these skills, physicists — working together with representatives of all the other disciplines that make up complexity science — may crack open the question of how life formed on Earth billions of years ago and how it might have formed on the distant alien worlds we can now explore with cutting-edge telescopes. Just as important, understanding why life, as an organized system, is different at a fundamental level from all the other stuff in the universe may help astronomers design new strategies for finding it in places bearing little resemblance to Earth. Analyzing life — no matter how alien — as a self-organizing information-driven system may provide the key to detecting biosignatures on planets hundreds of light-years away.

Closer to home, studying the nature of life is likely essential to fully understanding intelligence — and building artificial versions. Throughout the current AI boom, researchers and philosophers have debated whether and when large language models might achieve general intelligence or even become conscious — or whether, in fact, some already have. The only way to properly assess such claims is to study, by any means possible, the sole agreed-upon source of general intelligence: life. Bringing the new physics of life to problems of AI may not only help researchers predict what software engineers can build; it may also reveal the limits of trying to capture life's essential character in silicon.

The first-ever commercial rocket launched at Brazil's Alcantara Space Center crashed soon after liftoff late earlier this week, dealing a blow to Brazilian aerospace ambitions and shares of South Korean satellite launch company Innospace. From a report: The rocket began its vertical trajectory as planned after liftoff [Monday] at 10:13 p.m. local time (0113 GMT) but fell to the ground after something went wrong 30 seconds into its flight, Innospace CEO Kim Soo-jong said in a letter to shareholders.

The craft crashed within a pre-designated safety zone and did not harm anyone, he said. Brazil's air force said firefighters were sent to analyze the wreckage and impact zone. "We are deeply sorry that we failed to meet the expectations of our shareholders who supported our first commercial launch," the CEO wrote in the letter, which was posted on the company's website on December 23. Innospace shares plunged nearly 29% in Seoul in its biggest daily drop and heaviest daily trading volume since its July 2024 listing.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, who was confirmed by the Senate just last week after a turbulent nomination process that stretched across most of 2025, said Friday that the United States will return to the moon within President Donald Trump's second term. Isaacman made the comments during an interview on CNBC, calling Trump's recommitment to lunar exploration key to unlocking what he described as an "orbital economy." He said: "We want to have that opportunity to explore and realize the scientific, economic and national security potential on the moon," he said.

The potential opportunities include establishing space data centers and infrastructure on the moon, as well as mining Helium-3, a rare gas embedded in the lunar surface that could serve as fuel for fusion power. NASA is currently working on its Artemis campaign alongside SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Boeing. Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act allocated $9.9 billion to the agency earlier this year.

The Artemis II mission, NASA's first crewed test flight using the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft, is expected to launch in the near future. SpaceX is contracted to build the lunar landing system for the subsequent Artemis III mission. Isaacman was first nominated by Trump in December 2024 but had his nomination pulled in May over unspecified "prior associations." Trump renominated him in November.

With NASA's Mars Sample Return mission delayed into the 2030s, engineers are certifying the Perseverance rover to keep operating for many more years while it continues collecting and safeguarding Martian rock samples. Ars Technica reports: The good news is that the robot, about the size of a small SUV, is in excellent health, according to Steve Lee, Perseverance's deputy project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). "Perseverance is approaching five years of exploration on Mars," Lee said in a press briefing Wednesday at the American Geophysical Union's annual fall meeting. "Perseverance is really in excellent shape. All the systems onboard are operational and performing very, very well. All the redundant systems onboard are available still, and the rover is capable of supporting this mission for many, many years to come."

The rover's operators at JPL are counting on sustaining Perseverance's good health. The rover's six wheels have carried it a distance of about 25 miles, or 40 kilometers, since landing inside the 28-mile-wide (45-kilometer) Jezero Crater in February 2021. That is double the original certification for the rover's mobility system and farther than any vehicle has traveled on the surface of another world. Now, engineers are asking Perseverance to perform well beyond expectations. An evaluation of the rover's health concluded it can operate until at least 2031. The rover uses a radioactive plutonium power source, so it's not in danger of running out of electricity or fuel any time soon. The Curiosity rover, which uses a similar design, has surpassed 13 years of operations on Mars.

There are two systems that are most likely to limit the rover's useful lifetime. One is the robotic arm, which is necessary to collect samples, and the other is the rover's six wheels and the drive train that powers them. "To make sure we can continue operations and continue driving for a long, long way, up to 100 kilometers (62 miles), we are doing some additional testing," Lee said. "We've successfully completed a rotary actuator life test that has now certified the rotary system to 100 kilometers for driving, and we have similar testing going on for the brakes. That is going well, and we should finish those early part of next year."

Russia plans to put a nuclear power plant on the moon in the next decade to supply its lunar space programme and a joint Russian-Chinese research station, as major powers rush to explore the earth's only natural satellite. Reuters: Ever since Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to go into space in 1961, Russia has prided itself as a leading power in space exploration, but in recent decades it has fallen behind the United States and, increasingly, China. Russia's ambitions suffered a massive blow in August 2023 when its unmanned Luna-25 mission smashed into the surface of the moon while attempting to land, and Elon Musk has revolutionised the launch of space vehicles - once a Russian speciality.

Russia's state space corporation, Roscosmos, said in a statement that it planned to build a lunar power plant by 2036 and signed a contract with the Lavochkin Association aerospace company to do it. Roscosmos did not say explicitly that the plant would be nuclear but it said the participants included Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom and the Kurchatov Institute, Russia's leading nuclear research institute. Roscosmos said the purpose of the plant was to power Russia's lunar programme, including rovers, an observatory and the infrastructure of the joint Russian-Chinese International Lunar Research Station.

Longtime Slashdot reader MrFreak shares a public radio interview from 2015 discussing artificial intelligence as inference over abstract inputs, along with scaling limits, automation, and governance models, where for-profit engines are constrained by nonprofit oversight: Recorded months before OpenAI was founded, the conversation treats intelligence as math plus incentives rather than something mystical, touching on architectural bottlenecks, why "reasoning" may not simply emerge from brute force, labor displacement, and institutional design for advanced AI systems. Many of the themes align closely with current debates around large language models and AI governance.

The recording was revisited following recent remarks by Sergey Brin at Stanford, where he acknowledged that despite Google's early work on Transformers, institutional hesitation and incentive structures limited how aggressively the technology was pursued. The interview provides an earlier, first-principles perspective on how abstraction, scaling, and organizational design might interact once AI systems begin to compound.

joshuark shares a report from Ars Technica: For the better part of two months last year, most of us had no idea how serious the problems were with Boeing's Starliner spacecraft docked at the International Space Station. A safety advisory panel found this uncertainty also filtered through NASA's workforce. [...] The Starliner capsule was beset by problems with its maneuvering thrusters and pernicious helium leaks on its 27-hour trip from the launch pad to the ISS. For a short time, Starliner commander Wilmore lost his ability to control the movements of his spacecraft as it moved in for docking at the station in June 2024. Engineers determined that some of the thrusters were overheating and eventually recovered most of their function, allowing Starliner to dock with the ISS. [...]

Throughout that summer, managers from NASA and Boeing repeatedly stated that the spacecraft was safe to bring Wilmore and Williams home if the station needed to be evacuated in an emergency. But officials on the ground ordered extensive testing to understand the root of the problems. Buried behind the headlines, there was a real chance NASA managers would decide -- as they ultimately did -- not to put astronauts on Boeing's crew capsule when it was time to depart the ISS. [...] It would have been better, [Charlie Precourt, a former space shuttle commander and now a member of NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP)] and other panel members said Friday, if NASA made a formal declaration of an in-flight "mishap" or "high visibility close call" soon after the Starliner spacecraft's troubled rendezvous with the ISS. Such a declaration would have elevated responsibility for the investigation to NASA's safety office. [...]

After months of testing and analysis, NASA officials were unsure if the thruster problems would recur on Starliner's flight home. They decided in August 2024 to return the spacecraft to the ground without the astronauts, and the capsule safely landed in New Mexico the following month. The next Starliner flight will carry only cargo to the ISS. The safety panel recommended that NASA review its criteria and processes to ensure the language is "unambiguous" in requiring the agency to declare an in-flight mishap or a high-visibility close call for any event involving NASA personnel "that leads to an impact on crew or spacecraft safety."

Tony Isaac shares a report from NPR: The U.S. government calculates the country's official time using more than a dozen atomic clocks at a federal facility northwest of Denver. But when a destructive windstorm knocked out power to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) laboratory in Boulder on Wednesday and a backup generator subsequently failed, time ever so slightly slowed down. The lapse "resulted in NIST UTC [universal coordinated time] being 4.8 microseconds slower than it should have been," NIST spokesperson Rebecca Jacobson said in an email. [...]

Since 2007, the official time of the U.S. has been determined by the commerce secretary, who oversees NIST, along with the U.S. Navy. The national time standard is known as NIST UTC. (Somewhat confusingly, UTC itself is a separate, global time standard to which the U.S. and other countries contribute measurements.) NIST currently calculates the standard using a weighted average of the readings of 16 atomic clocks situated across the Boulder campus. Atomic clocks, including hydrogen masers and cesium beam clocks, rely on the natural resonant frequencies of atoms to tell time with extremely high accuracy.

All of the atomic clocks continued ticking through the power outage last week thanks to their battery backup systems, according to NIST supervisory research physicist Jeff Sherman. What failed was the connection between some of the clocks and NIST's measurement and distribution systems, he said. Some critical operations staff who were still on site following the severe weather were able to restore backup power by activating a diesel generator the team had kept in reserve, Sherman said.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post. (Alternate URL here): The American patrol satellite had the targets in its sights: two recently launched Chinese spacecraft flying through one of the most sensitive neighborhoods in space. Like any good tactical fighter, the American spacecraft, known as USA 270, approached from behind, so that the sun would be at its back, illuminating the quarry.

But then one of the Chinese satellites countered by slowing down. As USA 270 zipped by, the Chinese satellite dropped in behind its American pursuer, like Maverick's signature "hit-the-brakes" move in the movie "Top Gun." The positions reversed, U.S. officials controlling their spacecraft from Earth were forced to plot their next move. The encounter some 22,000 miles above Earth in 2022 was never acknowledged publicly by the Pentagon or Beijing. Happening out of sight and little noticed except by space and defense specialists, this kind of orbital skirmishing has become so common that defense officials now refer to it as "dogfighting..."

Much of the "dogfighting" activity in space is simply for spying, defense analysts say, with specifics largely classified — snapping photos of each other's satellites to learn what kind of systems are on board and their capabilities. They monitor the signals and data emitted by satellites, listening to communications between space and the ground. Many can even jam those signals or interfere with orbiting craft that provide missile warnings, spy or relay critical information to troops... Traditionally, once a satellite was in orbit, it largely stayed on a fixed path, its operators reluctant to burn precious fuel. But now, the Pentagon and its adversaries, notably China and Russia, are launching satellites designed to fly in more dynamic ways that resemble aircraft — banking hard, slowing down, speeding up, even flying in tandem.

"Traditionally satellites weren't designed to fight, and they weren't designed to protect themselves in a fight," said Clinton Clark, the chief growth officer of ExoAnalytic Solutions, a company that monitors activity in space. "That is all changing now."
"Unlike dogfights between fighter jets, the jockeying-for-position encounters in orbit take place over several hours, even days," the article points out.

But it also notes that recently Germany's defense minister "complained about a Russian satellite that had been flying close to a commercial communications satellite used by the German military. 'They can jam, blind, manipulate or kinetically disrupt satellites,' he said."

Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Space.com: Astronomers have made a truly mind-boggling discovery using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST): a runaway black hole 10 million times larger than the sun, rocketing through space at a staggering 2.2 million miles per hour (1,000 kilometers per second). That not only makes this the first confirmed runaway supermassive black hole, but this object is also one of the fastest-moving bodies ever detected, rocketing through its home, a pair of galaxies named the "Cosmic Owl," at 3,000 times the speed of sound at sea level here on Earth. If that isn't astounding enough, the black hole is pushing forward a literal galaxy-sized "bow-shock" of matter in front of it, while simultaneously dragging a 200,000 light-year-long tail behind it, within which gas is accumulating and triggering star formation. "It boggles the mind!" discovery team leader Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University told Space.com. "The forces that are needed to dislodge such a massive black hole from its home are enormous. And yet, it was predicted that such escapes should occur!"

"This is the only black hole that has been found far away from its former home," van Dokkum said. "That made it the best candidate [for a] runaway supermassive black hole, but what was missing was confirmation. All we really had was a streak that was difficult to explain in any other way. With the JWST, we have now confirmed that there is indeed a black hole at the tip of the streak, and that it is speeding away from its former host."

The research is currently available as a pre-peer-reviewed paper on arXiv.

More carbon dioxide in the environment is making food more calorific but less nutritious -- and also potentially more toxic, a study has found. From a report: Sterre ter Haar, a lecturer at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and other researchers at the institution created a method to compare multiple studies on plants' responses to increased CO2 levels. The results, she said, were a shock: although crop yields increase, they become less nutrient-dense. While zinc levels in particular drop, lead levels increase.

"Seeing how dramatic some of the nutritional changes were, and how this differed across plants, was a big surprise," she told the Guardian. "We aren't seeing a simple dilution effect but rather a complete shift in the composition of our foods... This also raises the question of whether we should adjust our diets in some way, or how we grow or produce our food."

While scientists have been looking at the effects of more CO2 in the atmosphere on plants for a decade, their work has been difficult to compare. The new research established a baseline measurement derived from the observation that the gas appears to have a linear effect on growth, meaning that if the CO2 level doubles, so does the effect on nutrients. This made it possible to compare almost 60,000 measurements across 32 nutrients and 43 crops, including rice, potatoes, tomatoes and wheat.

alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: A new study adds to the growing body of evidence that swearing can help us unleash our inner strength, improving physical performance, it seems, by helping people break through certain psychological barriers. [...] [Psychology researcher Richard Stephens of Keele University in the UK] and his colleagues at Keele and the University of Alabama wanted to test whether swearing could not only improve physical performance, as they had done in previous research, but also see whether it does so by changing a person's psychology in the moment, especially when it comes to letting go of inhibitions.

Eighty-eight participants, aged 18 to 65, all in good enough shape to exert themselves physically, were recruited at a university campus to participate in the first experiment. They each selected a pair of words based on the following prompts: a swear word you might utter after bumping your head, and a neutral word you might use to describe a table. Then, they undertook a chair push-up, which involves sitting in a chair and, holding each side of the seat, using your arms to lift your entire body weight (bottom off the chair, feet off the floor). [...]

Both experiments suggested that swearing offers an advantage in physical performance, with participants achieving longer chair push-up hold times as they repeated their foul-mouthed mantras. Scores for positive emotion, humor, distraction, and novelty were also elevated in the swearing tests, which suggests invoking their favorite four-letter word might enable people to transition into more action-oriented states, and perhaps actually enjoy their workout more. The research is published in American Psychologist.

Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Ars Technica: Every other week, it seems, a new Chinese launch company pops up with a rocket design and a plan to reach orbit within a few years. For a long time, the majority of these companies revealed designs that looked a lot like SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. The first of these copy cats, the medium-lift Zhuque-3 rocket built by LandSpace, launched earlier this month. Its primary mission was nominal, but the Zhuque-3 rocket failed its landing attempt, which is understandable for a first flight. Doubtless there will be more Chinese Falcon 9-like rockets making their debut in the near future. However, over the last year, there has been a distinct change in announcements from China when it comes to new launch technology. Just as SpaceX is seeking to transition from its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket -- which has now been flying for a decade and a half -- to the fully reusable Starship design, so too are Chinese companies modifying their visions.

The trend began with the Chinese government. In November 2024 the government announced a significant shift in the design of its super-heavy lift rocket, the Long March 9. Instead of the previous design, a fully expendable rocket with three stages and solid rocket boosters strapped to the sides, the country's state-owned rocket maker revealed a vehicle that mimicked SpaceX's fully reusable Starship. Around the same time, a Chinese launch firm named Cosmoleap announced plans to develop a fully reusable "Leap" rocket within the next few years. An animated video that accompanied the funding announcement indicated that the company seeks to emulate the tower catch-with-chopsticks methodology that SpaceX has successfully employed.

But wait, there's more. In June a company called Astronstone said it too was developing a stainless steel, methane-fueled rocket that would also use a chopstick-style system for first stage recovery. Astronstone didn't even pretend to not copy SpaceX, saying it was "fully aligning its technical approach with Elon Musk's SpaceX." And then, on Friday, the state-aligned China.com reported that a company called "Beijing Leading Rocket Technology" took things a step further. It has named its vehicle "Starship-1," adding that the new rocket will have enhancements from AI and is billed as a "fully reusable AI rocket."