Astounding August Science Breakthroughs: Exoplanet Next Door, AI Milestone, Climate Alarms & More
A Saturn-mass exoplanet candidate orbiting Alpha Centauri A at about 1–2 AU was directly imaged by JWST, potentially the closest directly imaged planet to its star at roughly 4 light-years from Earth. OpenAI released GPT-5 to about 700 million ChatGPT users, delivering significantly improved reasoning, problem-solving, domain expertise, and on-demand software coding with an enterprise focus. Italy’s Space Agency will have Italian scientific payloads aboard SpaceX’s Starship on its first Mars-bound missions, with Starship standing about 123 meters tall and a June engine test having ended in an explosion. On August 7, 2025, a solar storm consisting of M-class flares