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Scientists spot ‘glory effect’ on a world beyond our solar system for the first time – CNN

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Astronomers have spotted what they believe to be a rainbow-like phenomenon occurring on a planet outside our solar system for the first time, and it could reveal new insights about alien worlds.

Observations from the European Space Agency’s Cheops space telescope, or Characterising ExOplanet Satellite, detected a “glory effect” on WASP-76b, an ultra-hot exoplanet 637 light-years from Earth.

Often seen on Earth, the effect consists of concentric, colorful rings of light, and it occurs when light reflects off clouds made of a uniform substance.

Beyond Earth, the glory effect had only been seen on Venus until Cheops and other missions picked up an incredibly faint signal suggesting it occurs in the atmosphere of the hellishly hot WASP-76b. Based on the signal detected by Cheops, astronomers believe the atmospheric phenomenon is directly facing Earth.

Researchers reported details of the observation April 5 in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

“There’s a reason no glory has been seen before outside our Solar System — it requires very peculiar conditions,” said lead study author Olivier Demangeon, an astronomer at the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences in Portugal, in a statement. “First, you need atmospheric particles that are close-to-perfectly spherical, completely uniform and stable enough to be observed over a long time. The planet’s nearby star needs to shine directly at it, with the observer — here Cheops — at just the right orientation.”

A wild, scorching planet

WASP-76b has intrigued astronomers ever since its discovery in 2013.

The exoplanet closely orbits its host star, and the intense heat and radiation received from that sun-like star — more than 4,000 times the amount of radiation that Earth gets from our sun — has caused WASP-76b to puff up, making it nearly double the size of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system.

A simulated view shows a glory as it may appear on Venus (left) and Earth.

The planet is tidally locked to its star, meaning that one side, known as the dayside, always faces the star, while the other face of the planet is in permanent night.

The dayside of WASP-76B reaches scorching temperatures of 4,352 degrees Fahrenheit (2,400 degrees Celsius). Elements that would typically form rocks on Earth melt and evaporate on the dayside before condensing and creating clouds that release molten iron rain on the night side.

Astronomers decided to focus a whole host of observatories, including Cheops, the Hubble Space Telescope, the now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope and NASA’s planet-hunting TESS mission, to study what appeared to be an imbalance of light that occurred as WASP-76b orbited in front of its host star.

Combined data from Cheops and TESS, or the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, hinted that the anomaly might be due to something intriguing occurring in the atmosphere above the dayside.

Cheops captured data from WASP-76b as the planet passed in front of its star, making 23 observations over three years.

When astronomers looked at the data, they noticed an unusual increase in light coming from the eastern “terminator” on the planet, or the boundary light between the day and night sides. Meanwhile, less light was released from the western terminator.

“This is the first time that such a sharp change has been detected in the brightness of an exoplanet, its ‘phase curve,’” Demangeon said. “This discovery leads us to hypothesize that this unexpected glow could be caused by a strong, localised and anisotropic (directionally dependent) reflection — the glory effect.”

Demangeon said he is thrilled to be involved in the first detection of this type of light coming from an exoplanet.

“It was such a special feeling — a particular satisfaction that doesn’t happen every day,” he said.

Colorful light on alien worlds

Glory and rainbows aren’t the same thing. Rainbows occur when light is bent as it passes consecutively through two mediums with differing densities, like from air to water. As the light is bent, it breaks into different colors, creating an arcing rainbow.

But the glory effect is created as light moves through a narrow opening and bends, creating colorful, patterned rings.

If astronomers truly are seeing the glory effect on WASP-76b, it means the planet has persistent clouds made of perfectly spherical droplets — or clouds that constantly replenish. Either way, the presence of such clouds suggests that the planet’s atmosphere has a stable temperature.

The nature of what exactly is in the clouds on WASP-76b remains a mystery, but it could be iron, since the element has previously been detected in clouds on the planet.

This artist's illustration shows the night-side view of the exoplanet WASP-76b, where iron rains down from the sky.

“What’s important to keep in mind is the incredible scale of what we’re witnessing,” said Matthew Standing, a European Space Agency research fellow studying exoplanets, in a statement. Standing was not involved in the study.

“WASP-76b is several hundred light-years away — an intensely hot gas giant planet where it likely rains molten iron,” Standing said. “Despite the chaos, it looks like (researchers) detected the potential signs of a glory. It’s an incredibly faint signal.”

If astronomers are able to observe the faint signal of a phenomenon such as a glory from hundreds of light-years away, detecting the presence of sunlight reflecting off extraterrestrial bodies of water may also be possible in the future, according to the researchers.

“Further proof is needed to say conclusively that this intriguing ‘extra light’ is a rare glory,” said Theresa Lueftinger, project scientist for the European Space Agency’s Ariel mission, in a statement. She was not involved in the study.

Ariel, or the Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey, is expected to launch in 2029 to study the atmospheres of a large, diverse selection of exoplanets.

Lueftinger said she believes that the James Webb Space Telescope or Ariel may be able to help prove the presence of the glory effect on WASP-76b.

“We could even find more gloriously revealing colours shining from other exoplanets,” she said.

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Microsoft releases inaugural AI transparency report – The Verge

The report covers its responsible AI achievements in 2023 but doesn’t talk about Mario flying a plane to the Twin Towers.

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By Emilia David, a reporter who covers AI. Prior to joining The Verge, she covered the intersection between technology, finance, and the economy.

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A new report from Microsoft outlines the steps the company took to release responsible AI platforms last year.

In its Responsible AI Transparency Report, which mainly covers 2023, Microsoft touts its achievements around safely deploying AI products. The annual AI transparency report is one of the commitments the company made after signing a voluntary agreement with the White House in July last year. Microsoft and other companies promised to establish responsible AI systems and commit to safety.

Microsoft says in the report that it created 30 responsible AI tools in the past year, grew its responsible AI team, and required teams making generative AI applications to measure and map risks throughout the development cycle. The company notes that it added Content Credentials to its image generation platforms, which puts a watermark on a photo, tagging it as made by an AI model.

The company says it’s given Azure AI customers access to tools that detect problematic content like hate speech, sexual content, and self-harm, as well as tools to evaluate security risks. This includes new jailbreak detection methods, which were expanded in March this year to include indirect prompt injections where the malicious instructions are part of data ingested by the AI model.

It’s also expanding its red-teaming efforts, including both in-house red teams that deliberately try to bypass safety features in its AI models as well as red-teaming applications to allow third-party testing before releasing new models.

However, its red-teaming units have their work cut out for them. The company’s AI rollouts have not been immune to controversies.

When Bing AI first rolled out in February 2023, users found the chatbot confidently stating incorrect facts and, at one point, taught people ethnic slurs. In October, users of the Bing image generator found they could use the platform to generate photos of Mario (or other popular characters) flying a plane to the Twin Towers. Deepfaked nude images of celebrities like Taylor Swift made the rounds on X in January, which reportedly came from a group sharing images made with Microsoft Designer. Microsoft ended up closing the loophole that allowed for those pictures to be generated. At the time, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the images were “alarming and terrible.”

Natasha Crampton, chief responsible AI officer at Microsoft, says in an email sent to The Verge that the company understands AI is still a work in progress and so is responsible AI.

“Responsible AI has no finish line, so we’ll never consider our work under the Voluntary AI commitments done. But we have made strong progress since signing them and look forward to building on our momentum this year,” Crampton says.

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Sugar-based catalyst upcycles carbon dioxide – Science Daily

A new catalyst made from an inexpensive, abundant metal and common table sugar has the power to destroy carbon dioxide (CO₂) gas.

In a new Northwestern University study, the catalyst successfully converted CO₂ into carbon monoxide (CO), an important building block to produce a variety of useful chemicals. When the reaction occurs in the presence of hydrogen, for example, CO₂ and hydrogen transform into synthesis gas (or syngas), a highly valuable precursor to producing fuels that can potentially replace gasoline.

With recent advances in carbon capture technologies, post-combustion carbon capture is becoming a plausible option to help tackle the global climate change crisis. But how to handle the captured carbon remains an open-ended question. The new catalyst potentially could provide one solution for disposing the potent greenhouse gas by converting it into a more valuable product.

The study will be published in the May 3 issue of the journal Science.

“Even if we stopped emitting CO₂ now, our atmosphere would still have a surplus of CO₂ as a result of industrial activities from the past centuries,” said Northwestern’s Milad Khoshooei, who co-led the study. “There is no single solution to this problem. We need to reduce CO₂ emissions and find new ways to decrease the CO₂ concentration that is already in the atmosphere. We should take advantage of all possible solutions.”

“We’re not the first research group to convert CO₂ into another product,” said Northwestern’s Omar K. Farha, the study’s senior author. “However, for the process to be truly practical, it necessitates a catalyst that fulfills several crucial criteria: affordability, stability, ease of production and scalability. Balancing these four elements is key. Fortunately, our material excels in meeting these requirements.”

An expert in carbon capture technologies, Farha is the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. After starting this work as a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Calgary in Canada, Khoshooei now is a postdoctoral fellow in Farha’s laboratory.

Solutions from the pantry

The secret behind the new catalyst is molybdenum carbide, an extremely hard ceramic material. Unlike many other catalysts that require expensive metals, such as platinum or palladium, molybdenum is an inexpensive, non-precious, Earth-abundant metal.

To transform molybdenum into molybdenum carbide, the scientists needed a source of carbon. They discovered a cheap option in an unexpected place: the pantry. Surprisingly, sugar — the white, granulated kind found in nearly every household — served as an inexpensive, convenient source of carbon atoms.

“Every day that I tried to synthesize these materials, I would bring sugar to the lab from my home,” Khoshooei said. “When compared to other classes of materials commonly used for catalysts, ours is incredibly inexpensive.”

Successfully selective and stable

When testing the catalyst, Farha, Khoshooei and their collaborators were impressed by its success. Operating at ambient pressures and high temperatures (300-600 degrees Celsius), the catalyst converted CO₂ into CO with 100% selectivity.

High selectivity means that the catalyst acted only on the CO₂ without disrupting surrounding materials. In other words, industry could apply the catalyst to large volumes of captured gases and selectively target only the CO₂. The catalyst also remained stable over time, meaning that it stayed active and did not degrade.

“In chemistry, it’s not uncommon for a catalyst to lose its selectivity after a few hours,” Farha said. “But, after 500 hours in harsh conditions, its selectivity did not change.”

This is particularly remarkable because CO₂ is a stable — and stubborn — molecule.

“Converting CO₂ is not easy,” Khoshooei said. “CO₂ is a chemically stable molecule, and we had to overcome that stability, which takes a lot of energy.”

Tandem approach to carbon clean-up

Developing materials for carbon capture is a major focus of Farha’s laboratory. His group develops metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), a class of highly porous, nano-sized materials that Farha likens to “sophisticated and programmable bath sponges.” Farha explores MOFs for diverse applications, including pulling CO₂directly from the air.

Now, Farha says MOFs and the new catalyst could work together to play a role in carbon capture and sequestration.

“At some point, we could employ a MOF to capture CO2, followed by a catalyst converting it into something more beneficial,” Farha suggested. “A tandem system utilizing two distinct materials for two sequential steps could be the way forward.”

“This could help us answer the question: ‘What do we do with captured CO₂?'” Khoshooei added. “Right now, the plan is to sequester it underground. But underground reservoirs must meet many requirements in order to safely and permanently store CO₂. We wanted to design a more universal solution that can be used anywhere while adding economic value.”

The study, “An active, stable cubic molybdenum carbide catalyst for the high-temperature reverse water-gas shift reaction,” was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Entertainment news

‘Bluey’ Episode “Dad Baby” Now Streaming on YouTube After Not Being Available on Disney+ – Hollywood Reporter

American Bluey fans can finally watch “Dad Baby.”

The episode of the hit Australian animated children’s series wasn’t included on Disney+, but the episode made its way to Bluey‘s official YouTube page on May 1.

In the episode, Bluey’s little sister Bingo finds a baby carrier, which was previously used by their dad Bandit to carry her around. When Bingo gets in, the children pretend Bandit is pregnant. The dad acts out symptoms of pregnancy, from cravings to aches, and gives “birth” to Bingo in an inflatable pool.

Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter in 2023, the series’ creator Joe Brumm noted that while some episodes like “Dad Baby” don’t “get shown in America, he felt that this episode was too special to not make. “What are you going to do, not make ‘Dad Baby’? I love it,” Brumm said.

Disney+ has not confirmed why the episode wasn’t included with the rest of the season 2 episodes on the streaming service, but fans have speculated that this is due to its plotline. THR has reached out to Disney+ for comment about Bluey being added to its official YouTube account.

Bluey currently ranks within the top 10 most-streamed TV shows in the U.S. after it was acquired by Disney, reaching young and adult fans alike. It follows a family of Australian blue heeler cattle dogs, as they navigate everyday life issues, ranging from making new friends to contending with the possibility of moving from their longtime home.

It received its first Emmy award in 2020 and has continued to receive a slew of nominations for various awards throughout its three seasons, including a recent Critics Choice Awards nomination for best animated series.