Key Facts

• Mars biosignature hint: NASA’s Perseverance rover found “potential signs of ancient microbial life” in a Martian lakebed rock – minerals and patterns that could be the clearest evidence of life on Mars yet reuters.com reuters.com. Scientists caution it’s not proof of life, but a tantalizing “potential biosignature” requiring further study reuters.com reuters.com.
• Physics first – visible time crystal: Physicists created the first-ever “time crystal” visible to the naked eye, a novel form of matter that oscillates in a repeating pattern in time sciencealert.com. Under a microscope it appears as rippling neon-colored stripes, and “can be observed directly…even by the naked eye”, according to the researchers sciencealert.com. This breakthrough, built from liquid crystals and light, could spawn new technologies – from anti-counterfeiting measures to advanced quantum devices sciencealert.com.
• Diabetes therapy frees patients: A stem-cell derived cell therapy for type-1 diabetes enabled 10 out of 12 patients to stop insulin injections for over a year nature.com. The implanted lab-grown pancreatic islet cells restored insulin production, marking a potential “major milestone toward…effective cell therapy without chronic immunosuppression” according to experts nature.com. The therapy’s developer plans to seek regulatory approval next year.
• Climate summit and study revelations: At the Africa Climate Summit, leaders blasted rich nations’ inaction, insisting climate aid is “a legal obligation and not charity” carbonbrief.org. They unveiled plans to mobilize $50 billion per year for African climate solutions reuters.com. Meanwhile, a landmark study linked all 213 major 21st-century heatwaves to big oil companies’ emissions, finding a quarter of those heatwaves would have been “virtually impossible” without human-caused warming carbonbrief.org. Another study showed climate change has already driven an 18% rise in dengue fever cases (4.6 million extra infections a year) in parts of Asia and the Americas washington.edu, with incidence projected to climb 50–76% by 2050 under warming scenarios washington.edu.
• Tech and health innovation: The U.S. FDA cleared a new Apple Watch feature that passively monitors for hypertension (high blood pressure) using optical sensors reuters.com. Rolling out globally this month, it reviews wearers’ pulse data over weeks and alerts them of persistent hypertension signs reuters.com. In medical research, a three-antibody cocktail delivered unprecedented broad protection against influenza in animal tests, neutralizing “nearly every strain of flu” – including bird and swine flu – and protecting mice even when given days after infection reuters.com. Scientists say this novel approach, targeting a stable viral protein, is the first time such lasting universal flu protection has been achieved in living animals reuters.com.

Space & Astronomy: Martian Life Clues and Interstellar Visitors

Historic Mars discovery: NASA’s Perseverance rover has uncovered one of the most tantalizing clues yet that Mars may have harbored life. In a rock sample drilled from Jezero Crater (the site of an ancient lake), scientists detected the iron mineral vivianite and the iron sulfide greigite – substances that here on Earth often form with the help of microbes reuters.com. The sample – a reddish, fine-grained mudstone nicknamed “Sapphire Canyon” – contains strange circular patterns (ring-like “leopard spots” and dark speckles like poppy seeds) that could be fossilized microbial colonies reuters.com reuters.com. “We can’t find another explanation, so this very well could be the clearest sign of life that we’ve ever found on Mars – which is incredibly exciting,” said Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy in a briefing reuters.com. Researchers stress this “potential biosignature” is not confirmed life reuters.com. The features might also result from nonbiological chemistry, so proof of ancient Martian life will require more data and sample return to Earth for deeper analysis reuters.com reuters.com. Still, the finding elevates hopes that Mars’ now-harsh surface once teemed with simple life billions of years ago when Jezero Crater was a water-rich habitat.

Another interstellar object: For only the third time in history, astronomers have spotted a visitor from beyond our solar system streaking through our cosmic neighborhood. The object, officially designated Comet 3I/ATLAS, was first observed on July 1 by the ATLAS survey telescope in Chile science.nasa.gov. Its trajectory and speed reveal it came from interstellar space – joining ‘Oumuamua (2017) and Borisov (2019) as the only known interstellar bodies to date. Scientists report the comet is “hurtling through the solar system” toward the Sun sciencenews.org, though fortunately it poses no threat to Earth (it will remain over 150 million miles away at closest approach) science.nasa.gov. Comet 3I/ATLAS will swing around the Sun by late October before heading back into the stars science.nasa.gov. Telescopes worldwide are now studying its composition for clues about the chemistry of distant star systems. Catching a third interstellar interloper so soon after the first two suggests such visitors may be more common than once thought, offering rare opportunities to directly sample material formed around other suns.

Cosmic collision challenges theories: In other space news, gravitational-wave observatories have detected the most massive black hole collision ever observed. The event, catalogued as GW231123, was recorded by the LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA network and involved two colossal black holes (~140 and ~100 times the Sun’s mass) merging into a single 225-solar-mass black hole ligo.caltech.edu ligo.caltech.edu. “This is the most massive black hole binary we’ve observed…and it presents a real challenge to our understanding of black hole formation,” said LIGO collaborator Mark Hannam ligo.caltech.edu. Black holes that large aren’t expected to form from normal star deaths – one possibility is each was born from earlier mergers of smaller black holes ligo.caltech.edu. The merger, which took place billions of light-years away, also produced extremely high spin rates near the limits of physics, testing the precision of Einstein’s theories ligo.caltech.edu ligo.caltech.edu. The detection underscores how gravitational-wave astronomy is revealing “fundamental and exotic” phenomena in the universe that can’t be seen with telescopes ligo.caltech.edu. Scientists will be unraveling this record-breaking signal for years to understand how such a gargantuan black hole came to be.

Physics Frontiers: A Visible Time Crystal

Time crystal breakthrough: A long-theorized exotic state of matter leapt from theory into visible reality this week. Physicists at the University of Colorado Boulder created a “time crystal” that can be seen with the naked eye – a world-first achievement in a field that typically deals with sub-microscopic quantum systems sciencealert.com. Time crystals are arrangements of particles that spontaneously cycle in a repeating pattern in time, rather than in space, breaking expected symmetries of physics. The Colorado team used a liquid crystal medium (similar to LCD screen material) confined between glass and hit with specific light pulses sciencealert.com sciencealert.com. This induced the molecules to form an oscillating pattern of “kinks” that produced an undulating sequence of glowing stripes – a temporal crystal structure that persisted for hours sciencealert.com. Remarkably, the phenomenon is directly observable: “They can be observed under a microscope and even…by the naked eye,” said physicist Hanqing Zhao, lead author of the study sciencealert.com. Video recordings show neon-hued bands appearing and cycling in the material.

Researchers are excited because it’s the first time a time crystal has been large and stable enough to see without specialized quantum sensors sciencealert.com. The discovery, published in Nature Materials, could open “an exciting frontier” of new tech applications sciencealert.com. Proposed uses include random number generators, advanced optical devices, and anti-counterfeiting technology that exploits the crystal’s unique time-based pattern sciencealert.com. The team notes that while this system meets the strict criteria to be called a time crystal, it’s just one incarnation – further research could create other types, perhaps with different materials or at different scales sciencealert.com. For now, seeing a time crystal with human eyes – something deemed impossible not long ago – represents a stunning blend of fundamental physics and visual wonder. As co-author Ivan Smalyukh put it, shining light on the right material can make “this whole world of time crystals emerge” seemingly out of nothing sciencealert.com.

Climate & Environment: Financing, Heatwaves and Health

Africa calls for climate finance: Global climate policy took center stage in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where the Second Africa Climate Summit concluded with urgent pleas and bold initiatives. African heads of state decried decades-long failures by wealthy nations to deliver promised climate aid, framing support not as charity but as obligation. “Providing climate finance is a legal obligation and not charity,” their joint declaration stated, pressing industrialized countries to honor funding pledges under the Paris Agreement carbonbrief.org. To help fill the gap, leaders announced an Africa Climate Solutions Initiative, aiming to raise $50 billion per year in funding for green projects across the continent reuters.com. The plan includes an African Climate Facility and Innovation Compact to mobilize private investment and “deliver 1,000 solutions” by 2030 reuters.com reuters.com. Africa contributes only ~3% of global emissions but is disproportionately battered by climate disasters – from historic droughts to deadly floods – intensifying the urgency. Summit speakers showcased homegrown efforts (such as Ethiopia’s massive reforestation campaigns and a newly launched mega-dam for hydroelectric power) as evidence that Africa can lead on climate action given resources reuters.com. However, the summit’s plea was clear: without substantial financial support from the developed world, the continent’s ambitious adaptation and clean energy goals remain out of reach. (Notably, some donor countries did step up with new pledges – e.g. Denmark committed $79 million for sustainable agriculture, and other small contributions were announced climatechangenews.com – but the sums fall far short of the trillions in needs identified.)

Heating planet, alarming studies: New research underscored the deadly impacts of climate change already unfolding. A blockbuster analysis in Nature Climate Change tied nearly every major heatwave this century to anthropogenic (human-driven) global warming. Researchers looked at 213 heatwaves since 2000 that caused mass casualties or big economic losses worldwide, and found global warming made each of them more intense and likely carbonbrief.org. Critically, it attributed a significant portion of blame to specific emitters: the heatwaves were made worse by the accumulated greenhouse gases from the world’s 180 largest fossil fuel companies carbonbrief.org. In fact, 25% of the heatwaves would have been “virtually impossible” without the climate warming caused by these emissions carbonbrief.org. This quantification of Big Oil’s role in extreme weather feeds into a growing movement to hold polluters accountable, whether through courts or negotiations. Another study turned up the heat on public health, finding that climate change is markedly increasing dengue fever infections. The comprehensive analysis, spanning 21 countries in Latin America and Asia, provided the first direct evidence that rising temperatures have already expanded dengue’s spread washington.edu washington.edu. Warmer conditions create a “Goldilocks zone” for the mosquitoes that transmit dengue, allowing them – and the virus – to thrive in regions that were previously too cool washington.edu. The study estimates that from 1995–2014, climate warming drove an 18% increase in dengue incidence, which translates to about 4.6 million extra cases per year beyond what would have occurred without climate change washington.edu. Lead author Marissa Childs said “even small shifts in temperature can have a big impact” on dengue, and “we’re already seeing the fingerprint of climate warming” in today’s disease burden washington.edu. Looking ahead, if high emissions continue, dengue cases could surge 50–76% by 2050 as formerly temperate areas become mosquito-friendly washington.edu. This means millions more people at risk of the fever, which can be deadly in its severe form. The findings add urgency for both aggressive climate mitigation and mosquito control measures (including new vaccines) to curb a looming health crisis washington.edu.

Innovation and setbacks: Amid the warnings, scientists are also pursuing innovations to combat climate challenges. One futuristic solution unveiled is an experimental paint that “sweats” to keep buildings cool. The new polymer-based white paint not only reflects most incoming sunlight, it also emits thermal radiation and even releases water droplets on its surface for evaporative cooling – mimicking human sweat sciencenews.org. In tests, this “cooling paint” kept structures significantly cooler than the surrounding air, even under tropical sun sciencenews.org. Scaled up, such technology could reduce the need for energy-hungry air conditioning in a warming world. On the policy front, however, a controversial move in the United States signaled a step backward in climate transparency. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a proposal to end its mandatory greenhouse-gas emissions reporting program for thousands of large facilities reuters.com. The EPA argued the 8,000+ facilities’ reporting is burdensome to industry and “has no material impact on improving human health and the environment” reuters.com. Critics note this rollback – ordered by an executive directive from President Donald Trump reuters.com – would strip the public of crucial data on pollution from power plants, oil & gas sites, and factories. It comes on the heels of other regulatory reversals in the U.S., even as climate-fueled disasters (from record heatwaves to wildfires and hurricanes) continue to break records. The contrast between scientific calls to action and political pushback highlights the turbulent crossroads at which the world finds itself in the fight against climate change.

Health & Medicine: Toward Cures and Better Care

Type-1 diabetes breakthrough: A new clinical trial has delivered hope to millions with type-1 diabetes by demonstrating that a cell therapy can effectively free patients from insulin shots. Vertex Pharmaceuticals reported that 10 of 12 participants given an infusion of lab-grown pancreatic islet cells were able to quit insulin injections entirely for at least a year nature.com – maintaining healthy blood sugar levels produced by the transplanted cells. This approach essentially replaces the insulin-producing beta cells that are destroyed by the autoimmune disease. Previous islet transplants had shown promise but typically require life-long immunosuppressant drugs (to prevent organ rejection) and are limited by scarce donor pancreases nature.com. The new therapy, dubbed VX-880 or zucell, uses islets derived from stem cells, offering an unlimited supply. The trial results, which achieved insulin independence in the majority of patients, are being hailed as a major advance. “The preliminary data has definitely lifted the spirits of our community – and it’s a really elegant approach,” said Aaron Kowalski of the nonprofit JDRF (now Breakthrough T1D) nature.com. Experts not involved with the study also praised it as “convincing” and “a major milestone toward the goal of effective cell therapy without [needing] chronic immunosuppression.” nature.com Vertex plans to seek FDA approval in 2026, and other teams are racing with their own strategies – including one that CRISPR-edited donor islet cells to be “invisible” to the immune system, tested in a single patient with promising initial results nature.com nature.com. While more research is needed to confirm long-term safety and success rates, these therapies inch closer to what has long been a dream: a functional cure for type-1 diabetes, liberating patients from constant glucose monitoring and injections.

Universal flu protection in sight?: Scientists have announced a potential game-changer in the quest for a universal flu treatment. In experiments on mice, an antibody-based therapy protected the animals from almost every known strain of influenza, including dangerous avian (bird) and swine flu viruses reuters.com. “This is the first time we’ve seen such broad and lasting protection against flu” in a living organism, said immunologist Silke Paust of Jackson Laboratory, the study’s lead author reuters.com. The treatment is a cocktail of three special antibodies that don’t work by the usual method of neutralizing the virus directly. Instead, these antibodies bind to a highly conserved protein (called M2e) that lies beneath the flu virus’s surface and “tag” infected cells for destruction by the immune system reuters.com reuters.com. That sidesteps the problem of the virus mutating to escape the therapy – a common issue with current flu drugs and vaccines. In the lab tests, even mice infected with lethal flu doses survived if given the antibody cocktail, and remarkably the treatment remained effective when administered up to several days after infection reuters.com. This suggests it could be used not just prophylactically but as a therapy for severe flu, potentially saving lives in outbreaks. The results, published in Science Advances, challenge long-held assumptions that only “neutralizing” antibodies can fight viruses reuters.com. The vast majority of antibodies our bodies generate are non-neutralizing (like these), yet medicine has largely ignored them until now. If this approach translates to humans – and that’s still a big if – it could revolutionize how we combat influenza, including future pandemic strains. The researchers caution it’s early stage (just in mice so far), but they are hopeful that with further development, a single treatment could provide broad, durable protection against the ever-changing flu.

Genetics and maternal health: In a fascinating genetic study, researchers discovered that a mother’s ability to produce breast milk is influenced partly by her genes. By analyzing cells from the breast milk of women with high, normal, and low milk supply, the team identified three genes – GLP1R, PLIN4, and KLF10 – that showed distinct activity levels correlating with milk production capacity reuters.com. The precise role of these genes is still being investigated, but they are thought to relate to insulin signaling (GLP1R), fat metabolism (PLIN4), and cellular growth cycles (KLF10), which could all impact lactation reuters.com. This finding (published in Science Advances) paves the way for new diagnostic tests or treatments for breastfeeding difficulties. The researchers also checked whether a low milk supply affected the breastfed baby’s gut microbiome (since breast milk delivers beneficial microbes to infants) – and reassuringly, they found no impact on the infant microbiome from differences in milk volume reuters.com. “These findings…will assist in our understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of breastfeeding difficulties,” the authors noted reuters.com. It’s an early step toward personalized interventions – for example, if a mother is identified to have a genetic propensity to low milk supply, doctors might offer targeted support, nutritional supplements, or hormone treatments to boost lactation. The study highlights how genetic factors, alongside hormonal and anatomical factors, contribute to the complex physiology of breastfeeding.

(Elsewhere in medical news:) Researchers using data from over 2,500 toddlers found boys and girls show largely the same autism behaviors in early childhood, countering a notion that autism traits in young girls are very different or harder to detect sciencenews.org. This could help improve early autism screening for all genders. And on the public health front, the U.S. CDC was in headlines for a different reason – announcing a new research program to investigate any links between vaccines and autism, a move some experts worry could lend unwarranted credence to debunked theories reuters.com (the initiative comes amid political pressure from vaccine-skeptic figures).

Technology & Innovation: Gadgets and AI

Smartwatch blood-pressure tracking: A high-tech health tool is hitting wrists this month: blood pressure monitoring on the Apple Watch. Apple’s latest smartwatch models (Series 9 onward and Ultra editions) will use an optical heart sensor and machine-learning algorithms to check for hypertension in the background reuters.com. If the watch detects patterns over 30 days suggesting chronically high blood pressure, it will alert the user to seek medical evaluation reuters.com. Uniquely, this feature doesn’t measure exact blood pressure values like a cuff, but rather monitors subtle pulse wave changes that correlate with hypertension. Apple says it may catch early issues for up to a million users who might otherwise be unaware of their hypertension risk reuters.com. The U.S. FDA cleared the feature this week, after trials showed its alerts have a good accuracy in flagging potential hypertension reuters.com reuters.com. The system was unveiled at Apple’s Sept 9 product event and is rolling out across 150+ countries, including the US and EU, by the end of September reuters.com. Health experts note that it doesn’t replace regular blood pressure checks, but it could become a valuable preventive tool. With cardiovascular disease remaining a top killer worldwide, catching hypertension early – via a device people already wear daily – illustrates the growing convergence of consumer tech and healthcare.

AI’s growing pains: In the world of artificial intelligence, the rapid progress continues to grab headlines and raise questions. This week, Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, stressed that the “next generation’s most valuable skill” will be “learning how to learn” – adapting to the fast-evolving AI landscape abcnews.go.com. As AI systems like DeepMind’s and OpenAI’s get ever more powerful, experts say humans will need to continuously update their own skills. Meanwhile, researchers are sounding the alarm about the energy footprint of large AI models. An analysis of AI like ChatGPT found they consume enormous electricity in data centers, and that each complex user prompt can trigger significant power usage across hundreds of computer chips sciencenews.org. With AI adoption surging, technologists are calling for more efficient model designs and renewable energy sourcing to prevent AI from becoming a big carbon emitter. On a lighter note, AI is also being harnessed in creative ways – from composing music and designing new materials, to aiding scientific research. At a conference in California, one team unveiled an AI-driven system that invents shape-shifting materials in minutes (a task that used to take humans weeks) mccormick.northwestern.edu, hinting at a future where AI accelerates innovation itself. As major tech firms invest billions in artificial intelligence, debates around regulation, ethics, and workforce impacts are intensifying. Governments are beginning to discuss guardrails – Europe moved forward with an AI Act, and the U.S. is engaging tech CEOs on voluntary standards – aiming to ensure this transformative technology develops in a human-friendly way.

Other Notable Developments

• Artificial solar eclipse: In a feat of orbital precision, Europe’s dual-satellite mission Proba-3 successfully created an artificial solar eclipse in space sciencenews.org. The two craft flew in perfect alignment, with one blocking the Sun’s disk so the other could observe the Sun’s faint corona – a new technique to study our star’s atmosphere without waiting for natural eclipses sciencenews.org.
• Earth’s oldest rocks: Geologists in Canada have identified 4.16-billion-year-old rocks, possibly the oldest known pieces of Earth’s crust sciencenews.org. If confirmed, these rock formations (found along the eastern shore of Hudson Bay) survived the planet’s fiery infancy and could offer a window into early Earth conditions sciencenews.org.
• “Zombie” fungus insights: Scientists uncovered how a Cordyceps fungus turns insects into “zombies.” A study on caterpillars controlled by the fungus found it secretes compounds that make the victims endlessly eat and wander, essentially mind-hacking their hunger signals sciencenews.org. The work sheds light on the real-life version of The Last of Us parasite – thankfully, one that only affects bugs!
• Python bone-digesting cells: Biologists discovered a new type of cell that helps pythons digest the bones of prey they swallow whole sciencenews.org. The specialized cells line the snake’s gut and release potent enzymes to break down calcium-rich bone material sciencenews.org. Researchers suspect similar cells might exist in other animals with extreme diets.
• Crop origin solved: Using DNA analysis, researchers traced the origins of the adzuki “red bean” – one of East Asia’s favorite crops – and found it was first domesticated in Japan around 6,000 years ago sciencenews.org. The adzuki bean’s domestication history had been murky, but the new genetic evidence firmly pins its cradle in Japan sciencenews.org, highlighting the region’s ancient agricultural innovation.

Each of these stories, from cosmic revelations to genetic discoveries, showcases the vibrant breadth of science over the past two days. Together they remind us how rapidly knowledge is advancing – revealing our universe’s secrets, tackling urgent challenges on Earth, and sparking innovations that once belonged to the realm of sci-fi. It’s an exciting (and sometimes sobering) time to be keeping up with science news, and we’ll continue to watch as these developments unfold further.

Sources: Official NASA/ESA releases; Nature, Science, Science Advances, Nature Climate Change, PNAS journals; Reuters, Science News, ScienceAlert, ScienceDaily, CarbonBrief, UW News, and other science media reuters.com reuters.com sciencealert.com nature.com carbonbrief.org reuters.com carbonbrief.org washington.edu reuters.com reuters.com sciencenews.org sciencenews.org sciencenews.org sciencenews.org sciencenews.org.