These are the studies this week that went interstellar, entombed the sky, hit the gas, and renewed the world.
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that → go → world
First, scientists predict that there are thousands of objects from alien star systems lurking in the outer reaches of the solar system.
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scientists → predict → system
Then: ancient air is hidden in glassy Moon beads, the “worst energy policy in the world,” and a mysterious Mississippian luxury.
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air → hide → world
As always, for more of my work, check out my book First Contact: The Story of Our Obsession with Aliens, or subscribe to my personal newsletter the BeX Files.
The interstellar objects we met along the way
Over the past decade, three interstellar objects have been spotted streaking through our solar system.
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objects → check → system
It’s likely that dozens more of these interlopers will be discovered in the coming years.
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dozens → ’ → years
These objects travel so fast that they can escape the gravitational clutches of the Sun, which is why they are only visible for weeks before hurtling back out to speed-run the galaxy.
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they → travel → galaxy
But while some interstellar objects (ISOs) leave in a hurry, others may be here to stay, lurking in the outermost reaches of the solar system, known as the Oort cloud, reports a new study.
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study → leave → cloud
Over the course of its 4.6-billion year lifespan, the Sun has wandered close enough to other stars to collect thousands of non-native objects from the fringes of those passing systems.
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Sun → wander → systems
It may have also sent off many of its homegrown objects to join alien star systems during these encounters, like some kind of stellar gift exchange.
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It → send → exchange
“The Solar System has long been suspected to contain captured, non-native material,” said researchers led by Sean Raymond of the Bordeaux Astrophysics Laboratory.
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researchers → suspect → Laboratory
“The recent ISO discoveries have now confirmed directly that extraterrestrial material regularly passes through the Solar System.”
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material → confirm → System
Drawing on these discoveries, Raymond and his colleagues ran models to predict how many ISOs might be exchanged between stars during close encounters, called stellar flybys.
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ISOs → draw → encounters
The Sun is estimated to have had at least one or two of these meetups during its life so far, which could be “responsible for a large fraction of the captured ISOs currently residing in the Solar System.”
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which → estimate → System
“Given that flybys are unavoidable in the Galactic field, most stars should host sparse Oort clouds populated with ISOs captured during stellar flybys,” the team said.
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team → give → flybys
The Oort cloud — composed of frozen comet-like objects — extends for about three light years away from the Sun, so it’s not currently possible to send a spacecraft to go out to sift for ISOs in these distant wilds.
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it → compose → wilds
Still, it’s neat to know there are so many interstellar hitchhikers riding in the Sun’s backseat.
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it → ’ → backseat
Ancient magic Moon beads
A memory of an ancient ephemeral sky on the Moon may be locked inside glass beads scattered across the lunar surface, according to a new study.
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memory → lock → study
The Moon is airless, but there’s evidence that it was surrounded by a transient atmosphere billions of years ago, which was fed by volcanic eruptions in its early history.
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which → ’ → history
Rocks crashing into the surface may have also vaporized material and created brief, gassy skies over time.
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Rocks → crash → time
Scientists have now examined glass beads that were scooped up from the far side of the Moon by China’s Chang’e 6 sample-return mission, and delivered back to Earth in the summer of 2024 (that’s so Brat).
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that → examine → 2024
The lunar glass, which was forged by rocks crashing into the surface, captured the chemical signatures of the vapor plume created by those impacts, capturing a whiff of a long-lost transient atmosphere.
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which → forge → atmosphere
“Chang’e 6 (CE6) mission has returned the first lunar samples from the farside of the Moon,” said researchers led by Ziyan Han of Nanjing University.
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researchers → return → University
“The returned CE6 lunar regolith contains impact glass beads that could have recorded impact-induced vaporization on the Moon's farside and may serve as barometers, providing critical constraints on the global distribution of the Moon's transient atmosphere.”
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that → return → atmosphere
The team noted that these fleeting impact-induced atmospheres might exist on other airless bodies in the solar system, and beyond it.
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atmospheres → note → it
For this reason, the researchers warned that atmospheres detected around exoplanets “may not always solely represent stable, long-lived atmospheres” which could “complicate the interpretation of atmospheric data as evidence of long-term planetary habitability on the rocky exoplanets.”
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which → warn → exoplanets
There you have it—just some ancient glass beads that contain the breath of past lunar skies.
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that → contain → skies
The real cost of cheaper gas
How bad does an energy policy have to be for experts to declare it the worst in the world?
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it → declare → world
Buckle up because we are hitting the gas.
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we → buckle → gas
In an editorial published in Science this week, a pair of researchers lament the widespread rollout of consumer fossil fuel subsidies in response to the spike in gas and oil prices caused by the U.S.-Israel war with Iran.
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pair → publish → Iran
While it’s understandable for governments to want to ease financial hardships
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governments → ’ → hardships
, the team stressed that these subsidies are a major setback to confronting the climate crisis and they fumble the chance to present the Iran war as a clear example of why we need to reduce global reliance on fossil fuels.
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we → stress → fuels
“Consumer fuel subsidies are the worst kind of energy policy: they boost the most polluting kind of energy—fossil fuels—with a policy that is wasteful and deceptively hard to reverse,” said authors Paasha Mahdavi of the University of California, Santa Barbara and Michael L. Ross of the University of California, Los Angeles.
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Mahdavi → boost → California
“The Iran war represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels,” the team continued.
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team → represent → fuels
“But short-term measures that governments are taking—to help their citizens cope with unaffordable gasoline and diesel prices—will have long-term effects.
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citizens → take → effects
Making fossil fuels cheaper now will have catastrophic consequences in the future.”
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fuels → make → future
To channel the old joke from The Simpsons: “It’s the worst energy policy in the world…so far.
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It → channel → world
A Mississippian taste for cacao
Let’s close with a finely-aged dessert.
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’s → close → dessert
And I mean, really aged—this decadent treat is 1,000-years-old.
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treat → mean → ?
Humans have been consuming the delectable fruits of the cacao tree for many thousands of years in Central and South America, and the plant made its way into parts of North America, such as the American Southwest.
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plant → consume → Southwest
Now, archaeologists have discovered cacao was also consumed as far east as the Etowah Site in Georgia, an ancient city built by the Mississippian culture, revealing the unexpected spread of the delicacy deep into the Southeast.
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cacao → discover → Southeast
…and 9 more, not listed.
