TYB
https://thedebrief.org/3i-atlas-is-displaying-surprising-new-activity-that-scientists-liken-to-a-note-from-another-planetary-system/
https://avi-loeb.medium.com/will-3i-atlas-break-up-45687c4d7542
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cgK35QQpzA (3I/ATLAS May Have COMPANY! "Telescopes On Earth Are Picking Up Other Objects Flying Alongside It" Oct 9, 2025)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3jNWkLhEV0 (3I/ATLAS SHIFTS! CONFIRMED BY SCIENTIFIC STUDY Oct 10, 2025)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McokI0IQCU8 (🛸🚨 The mystery grows: 3I/Atlas isn't a comet; it could be alien technology. The images Oct 9, 2025)
3I/ATLAS is Displaying Surprising New Activity That Scientists Liken to “a Note from Another Planetary System”
October 10, 2025
Physicists have detected water activity during observations of the mysterious comet 3I/ATLAS, marking the first time hydroxyl gas, a chemical signature of water, has been detected from the interstellar visitor.
Using NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, the Auburn University team determined 3I/ATLAS is releasing water at a rate of roughly 40 kilograms per second, comparable to a fire hose running at full blast, while positioned nearly three times farther from the Sun than Earth.
What makes this finding particularly remarkable is the distance at which this activity was observed: 2.90 astronomical units, well beyond the region where most solar system comets show any significant signs of such activity.
“When we detect water—or even its faint ultraviolet echo, OH—from an interstellar comet, we’re reading a note from another planetary system,” explained Dennis Bodewits, professor of physics at Auburn University and principal investigator of the study, in a press release.
“It tells us that the ingredients for life’s chemistry are not unique to our own.”
According to their paper, the scientists used ultraviolet light to detect water molecules coming off the comet.
The team found that there is a specific signal water gives off as it breaks apart in space, and the water the comet was releasing grew significantly between late July and mid-August 2025.
To make this discovery, they relied on NASA’s Swift telescope, which orbits high above Earth.
Even though Swift only has a 12-inch mirror, it can see ultraviolet light much better than telescopes on the ground because it’s beyond our atmosphere, which normally blocks most ultraviolet light from reaching telescopes on the surface.
From its location in space, Swift has the same power as a much larger 13-foot telescope would have on Earth for this type of observation.
Since its discovery on July 1, 2025, by the NASA-funded ATLAS survey telescope in Chile, 3I/ATLAS has consistently defied expectations.
Previous research reported by The Debrief has revealed that this interstellar visitor is “anomalously massive” compared to its predecessors, with recent studies suggesting a minimum nucleus diameter of roughly five kilometers and a mass of at least 33 billion tons.
This extraordinary size places 3I/ATLAS several orders of magnitude more massive than the first two known interstellar objects, 1I/’Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov.
As Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb noted in previous correspondence with The Debrief, “We should have detected an order of 100,000 ‘Oumuamuas before discovering an object as big as 3I/ATLAS”.
The comet’s massive nature helps explain its ability to maintain course despite significant outgassing activity.
Unlike smaller objects that would be deflected by gas jets from their sun-facing surfaces, 3I/ATLAS has shown remarkable orbital stability, with non-gravitational acceleration measured at less than 15 meters per day squared.
The discovery of water emanating from the comet only adds to its complexity and mystique.
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Rather than simple nuclear sublimation, the research suggests water production originates from extended sources, most likely large icy grains in the comet’s coma that sublimate as they’re heated by sunlight.
This mechanism, observed in only a handful of distant comets, points to complex, layered ice structures that preserve their ancient formation clues.
The water detection adds another chapter to the evolving story of interstellar objects in our solar system.
As lead researcher Zexi Xing noted, “Every interstellar comet so far has been a surprise. ‘Oumuamua was dry, Borisov was rich in carbon monoxide, and now ATLAS is giving up water at a distance where we didn’t expect it.”
“Each one is rewriting what we thought we knew about how planets and comets form around stars,” Xing said.
Moreover, recent observations by ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter during 3I/ATLAS’s close approach to Mars provided additional imaging opportunities.
While the challenging observation conditions highlighted the technical difficulties of studying these rare visitors, it was still considered a unique opportunity to use the orbiter for something outside of its mission parameters.
“Though our Mars orbiters continue to make impressive contributions to Mars science,” ESA project scientist Colin Wilson said at the time. “It’s always extra exciting to see them responding to unexpected situations like this one.”
3I/ATLAS will become observable again after mid-November 2025, offering additional opportunities to track its evolution as it approaches perihelion on October 30.
The comet’s trajectory will take it within 1.4 astronomical units of the Sun, just inside Mars’s orbit, before it exits our solar system forever, traveling at a speedy 130,000 miles per hour.
The discovery has profound implications for our understanding of planetary system formation across the galaxy.
The presence of water activity in an interstellar comet demonstrates that the basic chemical ingredients for life are not unique to our solar system.
Moreover, the complex ice structures indicated by extended water sources preserve information about formation conditions in distant stellar environments billions of years ago.
As 3I/ATLAS continues on its journey through our solar system, astronomers worldwide are seizing this rare opportunity to study material that has drifted through interstellar space for potentially billions of years.
Each observation brings new insights into the diversity of planetary systems and the cosmic processes that shape the building blocks of life throughout our galaxy.
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Solar Watch, Big Quake, La Niña, Red Sea, Pole Shift | S0 News
Oct.10.2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkUIoDqmdPg
https://x.com/SunWeatherMan
https://spaceweathernews.com/
Billionaire Isaacman Met With Trump Over Top NASA Job
October 10, 2025
Jared Isaacman and President Donald Trump have met in recent weeks and discussed reviving the fintech billionaire’s nomination to lead NASA, according to a person familiar with the matter.
A decision to reconsider the Elon Musk ally would mark a major reversal for Trump after the White House revoked the job offer in May citing Isaacman’s ties to Democratic politicians.
That left NASA without a long-term leader as the space agency grapples with funding and job cuts and races to bring astronauts back to the moon.
Trump has met with Isaacman, a SpaceX astronaut and executive chairman of Shift4 Payments Inc. in person more than once in recent weeks to discuss his vision for leading the space agency, the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the matter is confidential.
The person cautioned that Trump hasn’t made a final decision and could go in a different direction. The role of NASA administrator also requires confirmation by the US Senate.
A White House official said no decisions have been made on the NASA Administrator position. When a decision has been made, it will be announced by Trump directly, the person said.
Isaacman did not provide a comment. NASA representatives didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The Transportation Department referred questions to NASA.
The US space agency has been helmed by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy since July and it has been unclear how long he was expected to serve in this role.
Isaacman, who founded Shift4, resigned as chief executive officer in June. Shares in the company fell 1.2% to $78.52 as of 2:10 p.m. New York time on Thursday.
Isaacman had found support across swaths of the space industry and in Congress. He was also a close ally of Musk after spending an undisclosed sum of his own money on two SpaceX missions.
But the White House pulled the nomination after Musk and Trump’s relationship soured in a public falling out.
Trump said Isaacman would have been “inappropriate” as NASA administrator because he was a “very close friend” of Musk and NASA “is such a big part of Elon’s corporate life.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/billionaire-isaacman-met-with-trump-over-top-nasa-job/ar-AA1OamQb?ocid=finance-verthp-feeds
https://nasawatch.com/trumpspace/isaacman-2-0/
24 Years Of NASA Satellite Data Suggest The World Is Getting Darker, And It's Happening Faster In The North
October 9, 2025
A new study looking at data from 24 years of NASA satellite surveys has found that the Earth is getting darker, and there are significant differences between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
The team looked at data collected by the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) project, which launched its first stage in 1997.
"Climate is controlled by the amount of sunlight absorbed by Earth and the amount of infrared energy emitted to space.
These quantities – together with their difference – define Earth’s radiation budget (ERB)," NASA explains of the project. "The Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) project provides satellite-based observations of ERB and clouds.
It uses measurements from CERES instruments flying on several satellites along with data from many other instruments to produce a comprehensive set of ERB data products for climate, weather and applied science research."
The energy budget is an important driver of ocean and atmospheric circulation, and so figuring out exactly where Earth is gaining and losing energy is of huge importance during the ever-worsening climate crisis.
Delving into the data, the team found that Earth's albedo, or the amount of solar radiation it reflects back into space, is changing.
"The general circulation of the atmosphere–ocean system is closely linked with the distribution of radiant energy within the climate system.
On average, the southern hemisphere [SH] and northern hemisphere (NH) reflect the same amount of solar radiation, and the NH emits more outgoing longwave radiation," the team explains.
"Using satellite observations, we find that while both hemispheres are darkening, the NH is darkening at a faster rate."
According to the team, the Northern Hemisphere is absorbing more incoming solar radiation than the Southern Hemisphere, whilst its outgoing longwave radiation is higher.
A combination of factors, such as cloud cover, snow cover, and water vapor in the atmosphere all contribute to the effect.
Earlier studies suggested that the imbalance between the two hemispheres can be offset by circulation of the oceans and atmosphere, but the current study suggests that key differences remain, which weren't compensated for by usual circulation.
"Since the NH darkening (relative to the SH) due to noncloud property changes (aerosol–radiation interactions, surface albedo, water vapor) is not compensated by cloud changes, this suggests that there may be a limit to clouds’ role in maintaining hemispheric symmetry in albedo," the team writes.
"The hemispheric difference in surface warming and surface albedo in response to increasing CO2 forcing seen in climate model simulations together with any further hemispheric changes in aerosol suggests we should see an increase in hemispheric albedo asymmetry in the future.
However, if clouds compensate for hemispheric asymmetry (e.g., through circulation changes), but do so over a longer timescale, the trend in the NH–SH ASR difference may reach some upper limit."
As well as this, the team found that the Northern Hemisphere is warming relative to the Southern Hemisphere, and the Northern Hemisphere tropics are getting wetter, suggesting a change in large-scale atmospheric circulation on the planet.
Further study of this complex system is needed, but the research suggests that the Northern Hemisphere could continue to warm more quickly than the Southern Hemisphere, and clouds may play a diminished role in redistributing heat around the planet.
"Our observational results suggest the NH extratropics will likely darken relative to the SH extratropics, but the short observational record precludes a definitive conclusion," they add.
"Clearly, a longer observational record is needed to precisely monitor the evolution of TOA radiation, clouds, and atmosphere–ocean circulation."
https://www.iflscience.com/24-years-of-nasa-satellite-data-suggest-the-world-is-getting-darker-and-its-happening-faster-in-the-north-81112
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2511595122
https://thedebrief.org/nasas-artemis-mission-may-encounter-the-moons-hidden-kreep-challenging-our-understanding-of-its-future-landing-site/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09582-y
NASA’s Artemis Mission May Encounter the Moon’s Hidden ‘KREEP,’ Challenging Our Understanding of Its Future Landing Site
October 10, 2025
New research forces scientists to reconsider what they know about the Moon’s South Pole-Aitken basin (SPA), the location where NASA’s Artemis mission is planning to set down astronauts on the lunar surface in the coming years.
When Artemis lands, scientists may find themselves immersed in clues to the moon’s origins, says a new study published in Nature, led by Jeffery Andrews-Hanna of the University of Arizona.
Landing on the heavily cratered far side of the moon would provide researchers with insight into the forces that produced its dichotomy with the relatively smooth near side, where the Apollo program landed decades ago.
The South Pole-Aitken Basin, Artemis Landing Spot
When an asteroid passing through the early solar system impacted the far side of our moon, it left behind the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin.
The 1,200 by 1,000-mile crater was formed in an oblong shape, stretching longer from north to south than east to west, suggesting a sideswipe instead of a head-on collision.
In Andrew-Hanna’s new study, they discovered that a tear-drop-shaped narrowing, as an asteroid traveled downrange, was common in impact features across the solar system.
When they applied this finding to SPA, it conflicted with long-held assumptions about the crater’s formation.
Until now, it had been believed that SPA was formed by an asteroid coming from the south.
However, the narrowing evident at the site, when viewed through the lens of the new research, indicates that the asteroid was actually traveling from the north.
The reason for this is that the direction of travel would deposit the material excavated by the glancing impact at the downrange end of the basin.
This changes scientists’ current understanding of the proposed Artemis landing area and what they may expect to find there.
“This means that the Artemis missions will be landing on the down-range rim of the basin – the best place to study the largest and oldest impact basin on the moon, where most of the ejecta, material from deep within the moon’s interior, should be piled up,” Andrews-Hanna said.
Supporting a Revised Impact
To bolster their findings, the team conducted further topographical analysis targeted at the crust thickness and surface composition, work that has implications for our understanding of the Moon’s interior structure and evolution.
Our traditional understanding has been that energy from the Moon’s formation melted the surface into a global magma ocean.
When the surface finally cooled and solidified, researchers expected heavy minerals to have sunk into the mantle, leaving the lighter minerals on in the crust. However, there were some odd exceptions to this rule.
A handful of elements remained in the final molten soup that represented the last vestige of the magma ocean.
These elements included potassium, rare earth elements, and phosphorus, which are collectively referred to by the acronym KREEP.
Andrews-Hanna’s team discovered that KREEP elements were far more common on the smoother, near side of the Moon.
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“If you’ve ever left a can of soda in the freezer, you may have noticed that as the water becomes solid, the high fructose corn syrup resists freezing until the very end and instead becomes concentrated in the last bits of liquid,” he said.
“We think something similar happened on the moon with KREEP.”
The KREEP Layer
Millions of years of cooling eventually turned the magma ocean into solid rock, stratified into a crust and mantle. KREEP-rich material acted as a buffer, a small amount of still liquid magma hidden between the crust and mantle.
“All of the KREEP-rich material and heat-producing elements somehow became concentrated on the moon’s near side, causing it to heat up and leading to intense volcanism that formed the dark volcanic plains that make for the familiar sight of the ‘face’ of the Moon from Earth”, according to Andrews-Hanna.
The reasons for the preponderance of KREEP elements on the near side of the Moon have puzzled scientists.
One of the driving factors, according to Andrew-Hanna, may be another element of the Moon’s asymmetry: its thinner near-side crust. The imbalance is believed to have contributed to how the Moon evolved.
“Our theory is that as the crust thickened on the far side, the magma ocean below was squeezed out to the sides, like toothpaste being squeezed out of a tube, until most of it ended up on the near side,” he said.
What Artemis May Find
Supporting the team’s theory is the concentration of radioactive Thorium present in the ejecta blanket’s western side, which is absent in the eastern portion.
Such a finding indicates that impact produced a rip in the Moon’s surface at the boundary between the final pools of molten KREEP and the already solidified crust.
“The last dregs of the lunar magma ocean ended up on the near side, where we see the highest concentrations of radioactive elements,” Andrews-Hanna said.
“But at some earlier time, a thin and patchy layer of magma ocean would have existed below parts of the far side, explaining the radioactive ejecta on one side of the SPA impact basin.
Sample returns from the Artemis mission will aid researchers like Andrews-Hanna to continue to pursue the mysteries of lunar evolution.
Some of the most essential materials to their work, such as Thorium, are simple to spot on the Lunar surface, yet getting a more thorough analysis will require first-hand access to samples.
“Those samples will be analyzed by scientists around the world, including here at the University of Arizona, where we have state-of-the-art facilities that are specially designed for those types of analyses,” Andrews-Hanna said.
“Our study shows that these samples may reveal even more about the early evolution of the moon than had been thought.”
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Earth from Space: Cyclone Errol
10/10/2025
This wide view of Copernicus Sentinel-3 shows Cyclone Errol heading towards the coast of Western Australia.
Errol was a powerful tropical cyclone, which formed as a tropical storm at the beginning of April 2025 and rapidly intensified while moving towards northern Australia, passing from category 1 to 5 in 30 hours.
On 16 April, when this image was acquired by Sentinel-3’s Ocean and Land Colour Instrument, Errol reached its peak intensity with wind gusts of 285 km/h.
The typical pinhole eye – a small, well-defined eye often associated with powerful and rapidly intensifying tropical cyclones – is clearly visible in the image.
Despite its intensity, Errol quickly weakened the following day, as it moved towards Australia.
This limited its impact and damage on land to heavy rains in remote areas of the Kimberley region coast, which is visible in the cloud-free portion at the bottom of the image.
Tropical cyclones originate over warm oceans. When they form in the northern hemisphere, they are referred to as hurricanes or typhoons, while those forming in the southern hemisphere are called cyclones.
Satellites orbiting Earth can provide indispensable up-to-date information on such events that cover entire regions, as shown here from Copernicus Sentinel-3. The width of the storm in this image is estimated to be over 500 km.
The mission is designed to measure, monitor and understand large-scale global dynamics and provides essential information in near-real time for ocean and weather forecasting.
https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2025/10/Earth_from_Space_Cyclone_Errol
https://www.ien.com/product-development/article/22952277/nobelwinning-tiny-sponge-crystals-have-an-astonishing-amount-of-inner-space
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m91P-R3kxOs
Nobel-Winning Tiny 'Sponge Crystals' Have an Astonishing Amount of Inner Space
Oct 10, 2025
The 2025 Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to Richard Robson, Susumu Kitagawa and Omar Yaghi on Oct. 8, 2025, for the development of metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs, which are tunable crystal structures with extremely high porosity.
These are a class of materials that have truly changed the way scientists design and think about matter, inspiring progress in various applications.
I'm a MOF scientist and for many of us in the field, this recognition feels both historic and deeply personal.
MOFs are not just elegant crystals you'd admire under a microscope; they're an entire universe of structures, each like a miniature city of tunnels and rooms waiting to be filled.
They've been my scientific home since I first stepped into research, and they still feel a little bit like magic to me.
So, what exactly are MOFs?
Metal-organic frameworks are like crystalline scaffolds built from two ingredients: metals that act like connective joints and organic – that is, carbon-based – molecules that behave as bridges to link those joints in a repeating pattern.
The result is a highly ordered, porous framework – a kind of molecular architecture that's both sturdy and full of empty space.
These frameworks are so porous, like sponges with tiny voids, that it's almost impossible to picture them.
One gram of a MOF has so many pores that it can expose as much internal surface area as a soccer field.
It's astonishing that a handful of powder could hide an entire landscape of surface within it.
That enormous surface area is one of the unique things that make MOFs so powerful, and it comes from the nanoscale pores – tiny molecular rooms that can trap, separate, transform or transport gases, ions and other molecules.
In a way, MOFs are like molecular hotels with countless doors, each programmed to admit only certain guests.
Why scientists love them
What fascinates me most about metal-organic frameworks is their limitless design space.
Just by glancing at the periodic table, every metal could, in principle, serve as a cornerstone, and countless organic molecules can act as bridges connecting them.
Even using the same combination can produce entirely different architectures.
So far, scientists have synthesized over 90,000 MOFs, and computational chemists have predicted hundreds of thousands more. Few material families offer this much versatility.
I like to think of MOFs as puzzles or Lego sets, but on the atomic scale. You can replace a single piece, or change its color or shape, and end up with a material that behaves completely differently.
Add a new "decoration" – what chemists call a functional group – and the framework suddenly recognizes a new molecule.
Stretch the organic bridges, and the same architecture inflates like a balloon, giving what we call isoreticular MOFs.
These have the same structure, but bigger pores. In short, MOFs can come in almost every imaginable shape, size and texture.
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Pushing the boundaries of these materials
Beyond their scientific elegance, MOFs are incredibly promising for real-world technologies. Different structures and functionalities lead to different properties and, therefore, different uses.
Some MOFs act as molecular sieves, selectively capturing carbon dioxide from industrial exhaust or even directly from air. Others clean polluted water by removing heavy metals, dyes or "forever chemicals."
Certain MOFs can also carry drugs or imaging agents inside the body for medical applications. In the energy world, they function as electrodes or electrolytes that make batteries safer and more efficient. And many serve as catalysts, accelerating chemical reactions that transform one molecule into another.
When I began my Ph.D., my senior colleagues warned me that MOFs might be too delicate – beautiful crystals that would crumble at the first hint of air or moisture.
And indeed, some of the early frameworks were fragile curiosities, admired more for their elegance than their endurance. But that perception has changed dramatically.
Many MOFs are now remarkably robust. The material I first worked on was a titanium-based metal-organic framework named MIL-125.
It was first reported by Gérard Férey, one of the foundational figures in the MOF and porous framework community who sadly died in 2017.
MIL-125 was not only stable, it was practically indestructible in my lab. After synthesizing two grams of it, I stored it on my bench in an open vial and used that same batch for every catalytic experiment throughout my Ph.D.
No glovebox, no desiccator – just a jar of yellow powder sitting happily on my bench.
That experience taught me something important: While stability can be a legitimate concern, MOFs have grown up. Thanks to smart chemistry, we have materials that can withstand water, heat and repeated use.
Since their foundation, researchers around the world have introduced new properties to these materials – from electrical conductivity to light responsiveness – and, crucially, made major progress in scaling up MOF synthesis for industrial applications.
Scaling is the key step in bridging the gap between fundamental discovery and large-scale deployment. Researchers are no longer content with studying MOFs in milligrams – we're often planning for grams, kilograms and beyond.
Some startups are turning these advances into real technologies – from storing gases more safely, to pulling clean water straight from desert air, to building more energy-efficient air conditioners.
What once felt like science fiction – powders that breathe, trap and transform molecules – is now science fact.
Despite these advances, researchers will need to continue improving the stability and scalability of MOFs to fully realize these materials' potential in the real world.
A Nobel moment that honors creativity
The 2025 Nobel Prize in chemistry goes beyond honoring three remarkable scientists – it celebrates an entire community: a generation of chemists and engineers who transformed a single idea into a thriving field.
The pioneering visions of Richard Robson, Susumu Kitagawa and Omar Yaghi laid the foundations for a vibrant discipline that has grown to encompass everything from gas storage and catalysis to energy and environmental technologies.
When I attended my first MOF conference as a second-year Ph.D. student, I listened in awe to many of the pioneers of this field, some of whom are now Nobel laureates.
Back then, MOFs felt like magical sponges, and that sense of wonder never left me. It led me to continue my research on conductive MOFs: materials that can carry electricity.
Now, in my own research group, we study how these frameworks can make batteries safer and more efficient, and how they can capture waste gases and turn them into useful chemicals using sunlight.
For me, this Nobel Prize celebrates more than a discovery, it celebrates a philosophy: Chemistry is creative, we can design and engineer matter with imagination, and sometimes emptiness can be the very essence of a material.
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Move Over Bezos, WA Company to Join Space Rocket Race
Published: October 10, 2025
A Kent, WA-based company believes it's unlocked a secret not found on Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rockets that will save them lots of money.
Stoke Space Industries secures funding for Medium-lift Nova rocket
The new Seattle-area startup was founded in 2019 and includes a former member of Bezos' space program.
According to Geekwire, the company plans to launch reusable rockets, but not just certain parts. According to Geekwire:
"SpaceX has pioneered reusability for its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy first-stage boosters, and Blue Origin has designed the booster of its New Glenn rocket to be reusable.
But recovering and reusing the second stage of an orbital-class rocket is a tougher nut to crack. That’s one of the things that SpaceX is working to achieve with its Starship super-rocket — and that Stoke is working to achieve with Nova."
The company has developed tech for a heat shield that officials say could provide protection and allow reuse of the second stage. This idea has attracted a lot of support and funding.
The company not only has its Kent, WA complex but has built a 75-acre test facility in Moses Lake. If the progress continues they hope to launch the Nova sometime in 2026.
https://newstalk870.am/wa-company-joins-space-rocket-race/
World’s most sensitive table-top experiment sets new limits on very high-frequency gravitational waves
9 October 2025
The world’s most sensitive table-top interferometric system - a miniature version of miles-long gravitational-wave detectors like LIGO - has completed its first science run.
The Quantum Enhanced Space-Time measurement (QUEST) experiment, based in Cardiff University’s School of Physics and Astronomy, aims to uncover the fundamental nature of space-time.
QUEST can measure changes in length 100 trillion times smaller than the width of a human hair and has set a new record for sensitivity in just a three-hour experiment.
This record-breaking level of sensitivity will help researchers study new physics about space-time, gravity, and the existence of dark matter.
Their experimental results, presented in Physical Review Letters, set new limits on the existence of very-high-frequency gravitational waves, which researchers believe could be emitted from sources from the early universe or miniature black holes.
Knowledge from developing and commissioning the experiment, will also contribute towards the next generation of gravitational wave detectors, according to the team.
“Our experiment is trying to answer the question of whether space-time is ‘quantized’,” explains lead author Abhinav Patra, an Enrico-Fermi Fellow carrying out doctoral research in the Gravity Exploration Institute at Cardiff University.
“Modern physics treats space and time not as two separate things, but as a single physical entity.”
A table-top experiment like QUEST offers researchers flexibility to optimise searches for fundamental science signals from dark matter or quantum gravity, a theory which describes how space-time would behave if it were quantum in nature.
Quantum space-time has been an active pursuit in the field of physics for the last five decades. Both theoretical and experimental studies ranging from cosmological surveys to levitated diamonds have been made, with many currently in development.
The Cardiff team has instead deployed its expertise of more than 50 years in gravitational wave research to the problem and are the first to use table-top interferometers in this pursuit.
Co-author Professor Hartmut Grote, also of the Gravity Exploration Institute, said: “Quantum theories of gravity can manifest themselves as fluctuations in space-time, which interferometers excel at measuring.
“QUEST is an interferometric approach to the problem of quantum gravity. “So, it employs all the lessons learned from the technological developments made for the interferometric detection of gravitational waves to study quantum gravity.”
The QUEST experiment took the team four years to design, install and commission.
They are now working towards conducting a months-long science run, which they say will further improve the sensitivity with which space-time fluctuation and gravitational waves can be probed.
https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/news/view/2954067-worlds-most-sensitive-table-top-experiment-sets-new-limits-on-very-high-frequency-gravitational-waves
https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/61j9-cjkk
https://interestingengineering.com/science/quantum-experiment-investigates-space-time
https://scienceblog.com/astronomers-spot-million-solar-mass-dark-lurker-in-deep-space/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-025-02651-2
Astronomers Spot Million-Solar-Mass Dark Lurker In Deep Space
October 10, 2025
At first glance, the picture looks like abstract art. A thin black ring encircles a speck of light while an orange glow spills across the frame, as if someone traced the cosmos with a neon crayon.
But hidden inside this warped scene is what astronomers say may be the lowest mass dark object ever found far beyond our galaxy, a million suns worth of invisible gravity pinching starlight like a flaw in a funhouse mirror.
The discovery, reported Oct. 9 in Nature Astronomy and paired with a companion analysis in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, adds a surprisingly small dot to the cosmic menagerie.
The object does not shine. It announces itself only by tugging on light that passes near it, a classic case of gravitational lensing. That tug is tiny, but when viewed with a global, Earth sized network of radio telescopes, tiny can be enough.
The smallest pinch in a very big mirror
To track it down, the team stitched together observations from the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, the Very Long Baseline Array, and Europe’s VLBI Network.
Combined, these instruments act like one giant dish, sharp enough to resolve milliarcsecond details in a lensed galaxy billions of light years away.
In the distorted arc from that distant source, the researchers noticed a subtle gap, a microscopic seam where the image should have been smooth. Modeling showed that only an extra dollop of mass could explain it.
How big a dollop? About one million times the mass of the Sun, concentrated within roughly 80 parsecs.
That lands squarely between star clusters and dwarf galaxies, a regime where mainstream dark matter theories predict many clumps yet observations have rarely dared to tread.
If more such objects turn up, the tally could confirm the cold dark matter picture or expose its cracks. For now, the result is a precise, single datapoint that teases a larger population hiding in plain sight.
Chris Fassnacht of the University of California, Davis, who co authored the Nature Astronomy paper, was direct about the stakes. Finding low-mass objects such as this one is critical for learning about the nature of dark matter.
Because the object is dark, its true identity remains open. It could be a compact, inactive dwarf galaxy with little or no starlight, or a free floating clump of dark matter much smaller than any previously detected through lensing.
Some alternatives look less likely, including an intermediate mass black hole or a globular cluster, but deeper optical and infrared imaging will be needed to rule in or out a faint host of stars. I would not bet the farm on a single interpretation yet.
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What makes this detection notable is not just the mass, but the cleanliness of the measurement.
The team first built a smooth model of the main lensing galaxy to explain the large scale arc, then applied a non parametric gravitational imaging technique to search for leftover wiggles that only extra mass could produce.
A second, fully parametric analysis agreed, yielding a mass within a tight uncertainty and a pinpointed location in the lens plane with sub parsec precision.
In other words, the pinch is real, not a data processing ghost.
Why a single speck matters
In the standard cold dark matter framework, structure forms from the bottom up. Small halos collapse first, then merge into larger ones, leaving behind a foamy hierarchy of subhalos within galactic halos.
Detecting a million solar mass halo at cosmological distance has long been a kind of target painted on theory slides, a threshold where observations could start to sift between cold, warm, or even self interacting dark matter models.
Hitting that target once is encouraging. Hitting it many times, with a predictable frequency, would be transformative.
Lead author Devon Powell of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics put it this way.
Having found one, the question now is whether we can find more and whether the numbers will still agree with the models.
That is the next act. The same lensing system already harbors a larger subhalo detected in earlier work, and the technique demonstrated here can be applied to other razor thin arcs captured by very long baseline interferometry.
If surveys turn up a census of similarly small pinches, astronomers can compare the counts and density profiles to predictions, potentially ruling out warmer dark matter candidates that suppress small scale structure.
For now, picture the scene again. A black ring, a glowing smear, and in the right place, a stitch that should not be there. Pull that stitch, and a million solar masses of something pulls back.
It is a tiny signal etched across a vast canvas, the sort of clue that makes cosmology feel both precise and wildly unfinished. Somewhere in that gap lies the answer to a very old question about what most of the universe is made of.
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